


Like Parallel Lines on Asphalt

by TooManyPsuedonyms



Series: What's A Timeline? [1]
Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: AU of an AU, BACK AT IT AGAIN, Gen, Just Plain Old Unrequited Angst, M/M, More Tags Coming As They Happen, More of a Re-Imagining, Multi, Not really a sequel, Terrible Medical Advise, inconsistent update schedule
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23723755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyPsuedonyms/pseuds/TooManyPsuedonyms
Summary: Do you believe in alternative realities? Parallel planes of existence?Want to know what happens if the people who need to be together... never got together?Yeah. Me too, buddy.
Relationships: Dr. Slug/White Hat (Villainous)
Series: What's A Timeline? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708756
Comments: 29
Kudos: 38





	1. Prologue:We’ll Start at the End and Work our Way Back

**Author's Note:**

> So Hi! How are you? 
> 
> Have you read the previous fic, Black Hearts and White Lies or whatever I titled it??? 
> 
> No? Go do that. You need background info. 
> 
> Then come back to this fic and I'll leave little goodies in the notes as a treat. 
> 
> Please enjoy.

Prologue: We’ll Start at the End and Work our Way Back

White Hat is sitting at his breakfast nook, enjoying a particularly delicious homemade fritter—made with _pears_ of all things! It’s not overly sweet, but it is bright and crisp. The day will be hot later, and his Dear Doctor will grumble and sequester himself from the sun, but that’s not happening quite yet. Slug is still washing his baking dishes, a frilly daisy printed apron snug on his waist. It is a very good waist… White Hat suddenly looses his ability to concentrate on the pears.

Their days are not exactly spent in leisure, but… Clem is gone off on her own, with a ward, so there’s been much more time to themselves. Despite the slight empty-nest syndrome Slug has been trying to explain that naturally crops up (especially at breakfast time), White Hat has to admit that this is very nice indeed, to be able to lavish attention on his doctor without worry.

White Hat finds himself wrapping his arms around Dr. Slug’s waist as he bends down to rest his chin on his beloved’s shoulder. Slug doesn’t tense, but he does briefly pause his vicious scrubbing of the breakfast pans. 

“Can I help you with something?” he asks.

“Hmm…”

“White Hat…” Slug starts, not quite teasing, yet not quite serious, “You seem… distracted?”

White Hat simply hums again and wraps his arms tighter around the Dear Doctor. His pale face pressed nice and tight against the steady pulse thrumming under scarred skin. “No, no distraction.”

It was Slug’s turn to hum. He didn’t stop his dishwashing, but he did allow the contact. Even when his gloved hands started to shake. Even when his breathing grew staccato. Even when White Hat untied the apron. It fell to the floor. The pair of them never quite did follow after that apron, but, that didn’t make it anything less than perfect.

The day would proceed as normally.

Normal for them sometimes varied, but the days stretched on pleasantly. The nights even more pleasant. White Hat ran a sharped nail carefully down the line of Slug’s back. Slug barely stirred in a deep, peaceful slumber. That was how much White Hat was trusted—even though Slug was always cautious and careful, he was at ease, totally. It amazed White Hat even now, even after years and years of contentment.

White Hat could feel the Heart of Gold as he fondly, often privately, called Slug’s very human soul. Per their contract, Slug stayed with White Hat, whole and hale, until White Hat no longer wanted him. White Hat still wanted him. He smiled at the burned face trying to hide itself in their soft, silk sheets. Slug’s soul was warm and weighty. It still felt things that Slug felt, and by extension, White Hat often felt he could understand his enigmatic, collected, hot-blooded human better. The Elder Being pressed a kiss like a snowflake against the sparse dark hair that still managed to grow before rising out of bed.

Drawing the canopy, he left the doctor to dream. He was almost inclined to peek into that sleeping realm, but by the calm and quiet glow he felt in his chest, he figured it was a rare night when dreams were not plaguing his beloved. So, he would not interfere…

No, White Hat was drawn out of resting not by the stirrings of the Golden Heart carefully protected in his chest. He remained alert because something else seemed to pull at him. Not quite dreams either. It felt… _older,_ this stirring on the wind.

Well, in total honesty there was no wind. All was still. Even the Manor did not creak in the dark, in the nighttime hours. It felt _halted._ There was a purpose to the motionlessness in his private home. It seemed to be like it was catching a breath before an impact. The fabric of reality was already pulled taunt around his Manor, around _him._

White Hat was still buttoning a dress shirt, when the unease ripped through him. It squeezed his body in vice and _yanked._ If he had human eardrums, they would have popped from the pressure, but alas he did not. No, White Hat was not physically human, and it was visceral reminder as suddenly, his body collapsed briefly and the human soul inside him, safely tucked away, shuddered for him. He felt it tumble around much like he assumed a hamster in those silly plastic balls might if given a swift kick down a flight of stairs.

Of course, the soul settled as White Hat’s body re-solidified in it’s (so far) favorite form. White Hat glanced down, to check on the soul, which remained fast asleep if still swirling a little from it’s sudden journey through dimensions. The Elder Being knew dimension hopping when he felt it, but he hadn’t done so without first telling Slug these days, or even, without Slug. White Hat had certainly never been successfully _summoned_ into a different dimension either. Not bodily at least. It was the first time he had been snatched by some unknown ancient magic. 

He glanced down to see what sort of circle he’d be standing in… to only find white chalk with Elder scribblings. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t mortal or in danger. He had only been forcefully shoved into a new physical plane somewhere far from the dimension he was calling home.

“Well,” a deep voice said, pinging something in White Hat’s non-existent hind-brain, “I do not know what I expected…” White Hat turned his face away from the scribbles on the floor only to face what he thought for a split second was a mirror, “But beggars cannot be choosers as the saying goes.”

White Hat was not staring at a mirror at all—mirrors don’t speak without you—and White Hat knew he was speechless. 

“They call me White Hat in this dimension,” his mirrored image replied, holding out a steel-sharp claw to take. “And you are?”

_To be continued..._


	2. We'll Start Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I will definitely post the chapters I have, but I will see how well they are received before I anymore.
> 
> This is not a threat, I just haven't posted a fic that wasn't mostly completed or a one shot in like..... fifteen years???
> 
> ANYWAYS. Vague TRIGGER WARNING for implied drug use? 
> 
> Please enjoy otherwise.

Chapter One: We’ll Start Again

  
White Hat is staring at a hand that is, and is _not,_ his own. He flicks his blue eye up to this new Elder Being that is also calling himself _White Hat_. It’s probably the soul inside him, but he does not take the sharp, glinting claw outstretched to him; he folds his arms over his chest instead.

“ _Who, or, **what** are you_?” White Hat asks in the old tongue.

The creature before him instantly perks at the words. The old tongue is, well, _old._ The first, and perhaps the last, sounds in all universes, in all dimensions. It is understood in dreams, in fevers, and by the maddened. White Hat looks for a soul, and finds none, concluding that whatever stands before him—though in some form similar to White Hat’s own—is not human. Perhaps some kind of Elder Being… though, White Hat thought he was the only one of _his_ kind—Black Hat excluded.

“ _In so many words…?”_ the creature starts, before shaking his head, “ _But perhaps in so many worlds—I am **you.”**_

_“There is no other me—”_ White Hat says, only to find the creature chiming in with, 

_**“Save for Black Hat—”** _

_“My brother…”_ White Hat finds himself trailing off to study the being in front of him.

The Elder Being in front of him looks almost like him—humanoid, tall, pale, lean, though perhaps the top hat is slightly stubbier… and he wears a monocle and three-piece suit with a trench coat on top. All in white, though his accents are grayer to White Hat’s favored soft blues. The eye before him is dulled, nearly, a slate blue, grayed, washed out. He is sharper. Not smiling. He doesn’t attempt to do so. He merely seems… like a lake that has frozen over in a long, harsh winter. Perhaps there is life beneath the ice but, its too thick, clouded by frost to know for certain. His hand is still reaching out, covered in chalk. It breaks the circle, meaning the magic that brought White Hat here is dead, gone, used up. That might account from the ashen, drained colors this new White Hat seems to present.

“Put your hand down, I won’t touch you,” he snaps in human tongue, walking out of the circle, “If you are me from some other universe, it could be too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

White Hat sighs, rubbing at his forehead and realizing he didn’t even have his signature top hat. He was in his night beanie. It was a snug one that Slug loved to tease him about, pulling it down over his eye if he was in the mood to be playful. He suddenly ached to be back in his dimension, “You have had me cross into another reality. One where something is different. Something happened. You have very little power and you reached out into the void to _find_ something and—”

“I found a more powerful version of myself, yes,” this other him continued, “So it would seem.”

“So, it would,” White Hat said, harsher than he meant to. He sighed. It struck White Hat then, “And I see you do not understand why this power could be dangerous, do you?”

The other him was silent, staring at him unnervingly, unflinchingly. “I need help.”

“Or perhaps you do not care,” White Hat said, turning fully to the other creature whose hand finally came to rest at the set of immaculate pants.

“I care.”

White Hat paused, eye narrowing as the other him made no moves, did not breathe—whether needed or not. The inhumanness of an Elder Being actions are more than jarring. It left White Hat unbalanced. Slowly he shook his head, locking his arms harder across his chest to protect the very human essence inside him, “… no, I don’t think you do.”

“I do!” the other startled. White Hat remained unimpressed.

“I am sure you _think_ you do,” he continued coolly, “But if you _are_ me, all you’re really concerned about is keeping up with Black Hat. That’s not care. That’s—”

“Dangerous?” the other shot back.

White Hat had many words to say, but, _dangerous_ fit well enough. He nodded instead. 

“You are not wrong,” the other him took a moment, eye flicking over to the circle and back, “I have been searching for a way to win over our brother.”

“Win?” White Hat repeated.

The other him did not take in a breath, did not gulp, he only seemed to harden as he continued, “In this universe, Black Hat is gaining a foothold and if I do nothing… This world will be lost.”

“Explain.”

“It is as I say! Black Hat is—” the other him stopped, gnashed teeth for a second before spitting out, “More powerful! I need help to defeat him. Two of us against him should—”

White Hat finally released his arms to hold up one hand to shush the other. It barely worked.

“If you are so powerful, you must help!”

“I will give you _none_ of my power,” White Hat started but was quickly overcome when the other rose and stalked forward pointing at his chest that hummed golden.

“You—” the inhuman screech began.

White Hat all but flinched, despite the other coming no closer, just pointing incredulously at his heart, “Wait, don’t touch—”

_“You swallowed a soul?!”_

“Not… exactly?”

“But I _swore_ to _never—”_

White Hat placed a hand over the still sleeping soul, “I didn’t eat it. This soul lives inside me. The man who gave it to me stays by my side.”

“… man?”

“Er, yes, the creatures I watch over are known as humans—”

“It is the same on this world,” the other said.

White Hat brightened, “Oh, that’s good. I quite like humans. I assume this is some other Earth?”

“Yes… But I know of no man who would be so willing to serve me…” the other said, bringing up that pointing claw to hold against his chin in thought.

“O-Oh…” White Hat pressed his hand closer to the warmth in his chest, “Well. I see where our realities differ, I suppose.” 

“How do I obtain such loyalty?” the other asked, face stone serious. 

White Hat smiled brokenly, “We just… got lucky, I guess.”

…

White Hat refused to touch his other, incase it ended up unwittingly sharing his power. He was uncertain what it would do to the human soul inside him. The rules of reality differ from plane to plane. Perhaps they could touch, and nothing would happen. Perhaps it could collapse one or both their forms until they joined into a single, fused entity. After all, it was the will of the Old Ones that the fight for Good and Evil be split into two lonely beings… If in fact, that was the will of them at all. White Hat’s previous truce with Black Hat proved that destiny and fate were fickle things, prone to whim and fancy.

In this reality, the truce was even shakier with Black Hat, apparently. His other could not quell his own brother. No, Black Hat gained followers and fans and the Heroes of this world were doing all the could to alleviate symptoms rather than fight the problem. Oh, there were heroes… but they were ungoverned and leaderless. Groups rose and crashed like waves, breaking apart into foamy despondent single players.

“So… no unification?” White Hat asked, wishing he had a mug of hot chocolate. This Manor was chilly, colorless, and no humans resided inside. There were no bedrooms. Only the grand corridor, the staircase, a façade of a kitchen, and… the office. They were currently in the office, as his other felt no need to present living touches to their conversation. It was White Hat, in his utter frustration and creeping cold that decide to walk down to find something warm to drink, only to discover the emptiness within a place he thought to call home. This other Elder Being didn’t even bother to sit. He stood beside a high back, pristine and bleached leather chair… _looming._ It caused him to snap, gesturing to the for-show furniture, “For fucks sake, will you not _sit?!”_

The other tilted his head curiously at White Hat, eying the way White Hat was keeping himself warmed by pulling his collar closed. Unfortunately, during the pull into this dimension, the first couple of buttons popped. In only slacks and a dress shirt—no shoes even—White Hat was perhaps as undressed as he could be without creating something from thin-air. “You… are not what I thought would be the most powerful version of myself.”

“For someone needing help, you seem quick to snub my advice!” he snarled.

“Apparently I cannot win over Black Hat because I am not so quick to… aggression.”

White Hat rubbed his forehead again, understanding why Slug use to develop headaches so often in those early days they worked together, “I am not being aggressive. I am just--” he sighed, realizing as he tried to find the words, his other self would simply wait forever, unwilling to interrupt or help. “I understand more. It is difficult to help someone when you don’t know what to start with… even more so when the someone is apparently you from a different dimension. Someone who didn’t experience what made you… you. So, _you_ are not _me…_ not _really.”_

“Not as you are _now,_ you mean?”

White Hat groaned, placing his head into his hands, “Oh my god. I am experiencing a headache for the first time. This is what this is. This is why he did that… I hate this. Oh my god…!”

“Well then. If we differ only in experience and I have told you all that lead _me_ to _you—or_ more precisely the plight of the me that should become _you—"_

White Hat chuckled, “What are we but the sum of our memories?”

“Excuse me?” the other startled, clearly not use to being cut off. Or perhaps because he was staring so openly at the sound that came out of White Hat. 

“That’s a—Haven’t you ever experienced something funny? I am laughing. It’s almost an involuntary physical reaction,” White Hat explained, shaking his head, “You’ve experienced very little happiness, I know, but trust me. It’s—ah…” White Hat sighed. “What an impossible thing you ask of me. To make you… _me,_ when you are missing something vitally important in understanding what makes us _Good.”_

His other made a move, but stopped short, seemingly affronted, “Are you implying—”

“Your heart—if you’ll excuse the phrase—is in the right place,” White Hat placated, lifting a hand like it was second nature to check Slug’s soul was still there, “But you are still piecing it together, aren’t you? The right things to do.”

The other said nothing, looking away as if the shame of the truth was too much to bear. 

“I still remember… Its hard to forget the yawning void of not having what others have. What mortals have.”

“And what have they?” this broken White Hat shot back, “What do they have that I don’t? _Power?_ I would not take a—”

“You don’t have to take a soul,” he said calmly, then glanced at the door, “And I can help you figure out what’s _really_ missing. You’re a little behind… but I suppose we could start by taking a walk.”

_“A—What?”_

White Hat motioned over his shoulder and began making his way out, “A walk. C’mon.”

The White Hat Neighborhood was as spotless as the Manor… but, at least there was more color. Green grass and blue skies. Buildings built of faded red brick or washed in creamy neutrals in neat rows along the sidewalk dotted in the pink of trampled bumblegum. A gaudy food truck made up in dark chalkboard paint was all colored with menus. A wooden slat with a rippling bright canopy showed a dwindling line of people leave with all kinds of hot foods were crisscrossing the street as they made their way into businesses and rec centers.

“Oh hey!” White Hat found the soul inside him warmed by memories of the owners, “That’s… _Jill’s._ Jill use to run that food truck decades ago—I… _wow.”_ White Hat wasted no time jogging up to the counter, his other hesitated but still quickly went with.

The pair was met with the surprised look of a rotund, but cheery face. Jill was as she was years ago—young and new, only 34—with one streak of green in her dark bangs. The rest of her long hair hidden in a quasi-chef’s cap. The food truck was popular forever and served American Comfort Food. It was cheap but made with love. White Hat could _literally_ taste it. Jill loved what she did and loved to give to people—all her leftovers went to the homeless and downtrodden. When she passed from a sudden heart-attack before her 91st birthday, it felt like the community’s heart was the one that really stopped beating. 

“Hi!” White Hat greeted enthusiastically. Jill stared for a moment. 

“Um…?”

“Oh! Right—” White Hat took a moment to calm himself, offering a hand, “I’m White Hat… well, from a different dimension. It’s a long story.”

Jill burst into laughter, taking his hand, and giving a quick shake. She then took off her now un-sterile food safe gloves and pumped hand sanitizer into her palms before replacing them. “I should have known. Cosmic powers of the Great White Hat. World in danger today?” 

“No, no, Miss Jill,” White Hat shook off. He then motioned to his other, “Magic mishap, you could say.”

“You know me in your dimension?” she asked with a bit of aplomb.

“I’m friends with most people in _my_ neighborhood,” White Hat explained, then pointed at his counterpart, “And I am trying to introduce _your_ White Hat to the outside world. I bet you’d believe he has never had a grilled cheese!”

Jill let out another belly laugh and pulled out butter and white bread, “I also bet he’s never had tomato soup to dip it in either!”

“Sadly, you’re probably right,” White Hat says with a wink. Then holds up what Clem would have called a victory sign, “Two, please?”

“Of course, _Mr._ White Hat!” she cracks.

“Now, you know it’s just White Hat,” he says, the line slipping out of him even years after Jill’s death. 

Her reply sobers him as she gives the other White Hat a careful look, “Actually, I don’t know that…”

He sighs as he too looks over at the other White Hat, who watched both of them, without movement or comment.

“I suppose you wouldn’t, Miss Jill,” he amends. She pats his hand still holding up his order, like she knows the next line by heart.

“You know you can just call me Jill, too.”

“Thanks, Jill,” he manages to say without tearing up. If his voice cracks a little, Jill doesn’t show it. She just hands him the food once it’s done heating up. It’s greasy, wrapped in brown paper, and slightly inconvenient to dip into the to-go cup of soup… but it warms him more than the sunshine spilling through the fluffy, Wonderbread clouds. 

They walk for a bit longer, past a park full of happily screaming kids. People avoid the eye of his other, but give him a little smile or nod as White Hat with the Golden Glow walks by. 

“You knew her…” his other mumbles, mouth still trying to figure out the whole _chewing_ thing. White Hat is gulping down his soup by now, being careful not to spill. “In your world, I mean.”

White Hat thumbs the corner of his mouth, licking a dollop from the sour cream Jill graciously added without charge, “I know what you meant.”

“You acted like—”

“Your universe is quite a few… _years…_ behind my own it seems.”

His other slowed as White Hat looked over into the park they were passing. He remembered it differently. Oh, it was vibrant, living under the shadow of safety… but it was _only_ a shadow in this reality. “So, this human you spoke to… she was a friend?”

“Was?” White Hat felt his brow crinkle in confusion, “No, she is. She _is_ my friend.”

“Oh, well, it seemed like—that in your time—you are far enough in the future that she… died?”

White Hat tsked, tossing his empty cup into a nearby trash can to keep walking. He was growing warmer by the minute. “You speak as if death is the end.”

“Is it not in your reality?” his other asked, curious, “Is this where their power comes from? An unlimited energy that persists even in death?”

“Energy…?” White Hat echoed, thinking about all the mediums and sensitive people he met in his timeline. His other stared curiously. “Oh! Oh, no, no. That’s not—” a rough sigh and White Hat shook his head. “Death is the end of life, yes… but not friendships. Not family. Not the connections we made. Not really. They live on in memory. Jill is my friend, just because she died doesn’t mean that the friendship ended… not really. You and I already exist outside of time and space… so…”

“So…?” 

White Hat kept walking, pressing against the soul glowing deep inside him, “So I decided that so do all the people I love.”

…

White Hat is warm all over, walking through this old neighborhood. He doesn’t quite remember the year, it doesn’t really work like that… He thinks it at least in the 2020’s? _Maybe._ His neighborhood is just outside the heart of the city, but not exactly suburbs. It was wonderful in his universe, and he traveled and made friends with as many people as he could reach. Tried to help locally, lead by example… and while this reality is… _fine…_ it is lacking. 

White Hat, while enjoying the rush of thinking of the fond times, is abruptly faced with the differences. Some faces are nearly unrecognizable, some are simply not there, and other faces seem too new to belong to people who should be there. He passes Kam’s rented yoga studio, and the man’s finger is unadorned. The more he walks, the more he finds people skittering in the shadows. He comes upon a dilapidated building. He glances over at his other.

“I do not know for sure. A warehouse, I think, many years ago…”

“It’s a… repurposed museum, in my time,” White Hat says, uneasy.

There’s something inside. His walk was leading him there… though was unsure why. Something is… _wrong._ Unsettling. He pushed past the chained doors. His other simply teleports to his side as they begin to roam the dank and dirty hallways.

This impending dread leads, like all horrors do, into the dark basement below. White Hat pushes past sheets of plastic that hang in doorways. Undefined substances litter the opaque surface in grime. There are people shivering in all corners, covered in filth, and White Hat feels every step he makes splinter shards of glass from syringes. The other him floats beside like a ghost, a beacon in such a dim place. The people scatter in hallucination induced fear—or just better sense. Only a few pause as they pass White Hat glowing faintly like a muted sun, but soon turn away as if blinded, because once you’ve lived in the dark, even clouded light is too much. Normally he probably would stop and help them… but something keeps him walking onward.

White Hat stops before a slip of a girl. She looks sick. Drawn out. Pale as death. Orange roots are showing beneath hair stripped of color and then poorly died blue. She wears a jacket that hangs off her. Who knows what color it should have been, it’s been bleached and splashed with dye so often… it’s dirty, and her stockings are torn, her shoes, gone. She’s holding her arms and staring up at him with jaundiced eyes. She’s dying. He knows her.

“No…” the word escapes and White Hat tried to stuff it back inside. It was tearing him up, inside though, “No. Not her… Please—” White Hat has to look away, finds his other self beside him, seemingly untouched by the surroundings. _“Heal her.”_

“ _Heal her?_ ” his other repeats in the old tongue. The girl follows their words in only the way the uncapped mind of the dying do. _“You cannot possibly mean to—”_

**_“YOU WILL DO THIS IF YOU WANT MY HELP!”_** White Hat demanded, pointing at the girl.

The other Elder Being isn’t even looking at her. Is staring with a confused eye at White Hat. “She made her choices.”

“How dare you!” White Hat hissed. He turned away from the other and bent to eye level with the girl. She backed into the wall, shaking her head, but he shushed her calmly. Then offered her a pale hand, glowing as soft as a lightening bug in summer, “Do you want a second chance?”

She hesitated.

“Please?” he whispered, “Take it?” 

The girl’s lip quivered, eyes wild, not quite clear, but desperate. 

“My darling, I can’t help you unless you want to be helped…? _Please!”_ White Hat begged, tears cutting against the corners of his eyes. It must have settled something inside her. She was not cautious, no, she grabbed with all the fight left in her. Bright and magical, she leapt past his hand and clung on to his arm and sobbed. 

_“Don’t let me die!”_

_“Of course not…”_ he hushed, soothing her hair away from her face. Part of her head was shaved, showing off infected ear piercings most likely done by herself. He would heal those as well. There was so much damage, he did not even have to lull her to sleep. Naturally, her body fell into his chest peacefully. White Hat smothered the instinct to rock her to sleep.

He started to arrange her along the floor before looking over at the other Elder Being. 

“What?”

“Your coat,” he said, unable to keep the venom from spilling out of his voice, “Unless you’ll deny her this small comfort.”

The long white trench coat was given to him and White Hat wrapped the girl carefully before lying her back on the ground. He whispered into her ear a secret that hopefully carried into her dreams. Then pecked her less sallow cheek and stood. His eye burned as he glared at this White Hat. 

“What?”

“Not here… not at the moment.”

“We continue our walk?” the other questioned.

White Hat shook his head, “No. Walk’s over. I have another idea.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” White Hat managed to growl, flexing his claws, _“Take me to Black Hat.”_

_To be Continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, in case anyone is curious, it's not another specifically created White Hat AU--its still kind of "my" White Hat. Just... certain things didn't happen.
> 
> It's an idea that has been plaguing me for a while.
> 
> Any questions or comments, please feel free to leave!
> 
> MUCH LOVE!


	3. We'll Start Swinging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might not be a story that is updated regularly as my schedule--DESPITE THE CURRENT CLIMATE--is sporadic at best. 
> 
> Also, for some reason, all of my documents have been shuffled on the cloud and FINDING this chapter was surprisingly difficult! I edited it a few times and for some reason, it saved as several different documents. 
> 
> Ugh. It has been a time!
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> Bad words. Little bit of violence. Little bit of meta and such.
> 
> That's all I can think of at the moment.

Chapter Two: We’ll Start Swinging

  
It was probably unfair. 

Actually, it was definitely unfair.

White Hat didn’t even particularly relish the sucker punch. He was too terrified of touching his other self—but Black Hat was not exactly something to worry about. This other Black Hat was also sharper. An inky abyss of evil. Probably. Maybe. White Hat did not have the ability to start cataloguing differences. He just marched straight into the laboratory and swung when Black Hat’s face was within reach.

Black Hat was certainly unprepared. He went down hard, and by the snarl and flaring of his gelatinous posturing, had not been struck in a very long time. Black Hat was ugly even when he wasn’t a raging animal with a bone to chew… but the presence of two White Hats seemed to calm him immediately.

“Well,” he grunted, fixing his askew collar and tie, “This is new.”

White Hat was huffing, and his other began solemnly, “Apologies, brother—”

“Do NOT apologize!” White Hat barked, still unsatisfied. His soulless other immediately quieted. White Hat kept his blue eye trained on his other brother, “Not to Him. He won’t respect you anyway.”

Black Hat scoffed in his sarcastically fond manner, “As if I ever respected you…”

White Hat didn’t bristle, didn’t flinch. His other?

“Brother—” the comment started but was cut off by two voices caustically:

**_“DON’T CALL ME THAT!”_ **

“Don’t bother,” White Hat drew in a deep breath and righted his own clothes subconsciously. He was rolling up pale sleeves to the elbows while Black Hat spewed hellish flames, “I am not here to speak with Black Hat.”

“Clearly…” Black Hat said, cracking his neck and eying the new White Hat interestedly.

“I won’t fight you either,” he explained shifting minutely to glare at his other, who cocked his head in confusion.

“Then why—”

“Oh ho ho ho!” Black Hat crackled, his sharp shark teeth on display as he grinned at both of them, “Learned how annoying you are—or…” the Eldritch zeroed in on the new White Hat’s chest, “Perhaps how you use to be?”

The move was quick, talons lashing out, but White Hat quicker. He grabbed Black Hat’s burning hand a hair faster, from years of reflexes and training and simply knowing better. White Hat sank his own claws into Black Hat’s throat without mercy. “You touch him, you die.”

The other White Hat (without a soul) moved but Black Hat held up on spindly talon in waiting. White Hat (with his carefully guarded soul) did not release the Eldritch monster. A wet laugh spat acidic blood across White Hat’s pallid arm. It didn’t burn as bad as it could have. 

“Well, well…” his other brother rasped out, “Look who finally learned.”

“I need information,” White Hat said, tightening his hold slightly.

“I t-thought you just wanted to ven-vent?” Black Hat taunted, liking this a little too much. White Hat could be accommodating, and so, pierced into the flesh under his nails with relish.

“What’s the human expression…?” he began.

Black Hat gurgled, not quite able to quip back.

“Oh yes, two birds—one neck to _wring_ if they pull tricks,” White Hat warned, swiftly releasing the other brother and flicking his hands free of blood like one does after washing away muck. Black Hat wasn’t one to pout—according to Black Hat—but he did pull faces as his throat healed much too fast. This Black Hat was powerful indeed, but not nearly as stubborn as his lighter side was.

He soothed his long dark column of a neck and motioned his head to the lab table, “Flug will help.”

“So, you have a Dr. Flug in this universe?” White Hat asked, casually noting the quaking scientist that had ducked under the table as soon as the pair of White Hat’s had entered the lab in an explosion of light. 

“What can I say? I’m cursed.”

“Hmm, I am sure,” White Hat said with a purposefully blank face.

Black Hat stared at him for the space of a second too long. Then yelled for the doctor to stop cowering, purposefully filling his voice was malice and spittle. The other Elder Being simply watched, touching lightly at the void in his chest.

…

The Other White Hat had remained on the sidelines of conversation, watching as Black Hat, Dr. Flug, and White Hat with the Golden Soul, communicated with ease—if a little harshly. Not so much that there wasn’t an undercurrent of fondness, but… enough that White Hat was clearly standing up to and, better yet, keeping Black Hat from getting on his nerves. The Eldritch had yet to reach to snatch the soul, with no hint he was even thinking about trying again. 

Suddenly Flug was handing over a printed sheet of paper, and White Hat nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Right, if you see me again, then you were wrong. So, for now, farewell.”

“And good riddance!” Black Hat spat out, waving his hand at both the whites. White Hat also made a gesture and the other Elder Being followed him out of the lab. He glanced briefly at his brother, finding an odd expression flickering over Black Hat’s normally diabolically face.

“How come we are going now?”

White Hat paused, glancing over his shoulder as he opened the Black Hat Manor’s front door, “Here’s the rule to dealing with Black Hat—When we have what we need, we leave.”

“What did we need?” 

“A location,” the White Hat with the soul answered. He waved the paper in the air as if it held answers. It probably did.

“Where are we going?” he asked instead of taking the paper. 

White Hat sighed, shoving the paper at the other Elder Being as he sliced through the air carefully, “To find someone who can help you.”

“Help me?” came the confused question as he stared down at an image of human hospital, “Is that not what you are supposed to be doing? You can just continue to tell me how you engaged with Black Hat so easily and I—”

“It won’t work like that,” White Hat shook his head, looking through his portal and nodding. With another gesture, one this soulless White Hat was beginning to understand was a “c’mon” movement, they stepped through the portal together.

The two were still on Earth, this Earth, but by the wet heat and glimmering sun, somewhere very south. If the mix of languages and the tang of spice in the air was another clue, perhaps Southern America. They stood in front of the hospital in the picture—one for students, apparently—and White Hat pressed his hand against the soul dancing in his chest. 

“Let’s go…”

Entering the hospital was different from entering the abandoned warehouse from earlier. There was nothing pulling anyone in, and as they passed young looking humans in faded blue scrubs, no one seemed all that bothered by their presence. White Hat had walked to a desk where a human sat and started speaking to her. The other watched, confused as to how easy it seemed for him to obtain information.

“Room 161? You are sure?”

“Indeed, sir. He’s a curiosity. Many doctors use him as a teaching exercise for the students,” a dark woman was saying, not altogether insensitive.

“A teaching exercise for what?” White Hat asked, taking a sticker and placing it upon his shirt. He offered one carefully to the other, who plucked it up with quick fingers and imitated him by smoothing it over a neat white lapel.

“Ohh—uh—coma care, burn care, sometimes compassion,” came the answer. She pointed down the hallway to an elevator, “It’ll be on the left.”

White Hat nodded, “Thank you.”

“His doctor should be in the room soon as well.”

“Good,” White Hat stated, then nodded at his other to signal something, though the other was uncertain what. They walked together down a winding corridor before reaching the elevator. When the doors opened, a janitor pushed a cart past them, and then they entered, still in relative silence. The White Hat with a soul looked… troubled. Yes, definitely troubled, the entire time.

“Who are we going to meet?” 

White Hat startled, apparently lost in his own thoughts. The elevator ride was short, but there was pause as he stared at the floor number. He shook his head as if to rid some thought, “Someone very important… to both of us, you could say.”

The doors gave a pleasant ding when opening. They stepped out. There was no hustle and bustle. Just muted speech. Nurses walking along dotted paths, walls a neutral cream, and the yellow lights dimmed. White Hat followed arrows leading him to the correct room number. The door was closed, and inside, it was darker than the hallway. Even the door was a whisper as it creaked open, as if in fear of being shushed by the busy medical students studying.

In the middle of a room filled with equipment, cords, and tubes, was a bed. It looked overly large and plush. The blankets looked soft, like a downy Sherpa maybe, as the air nearly felt like a meat freezer. A melodic beeping was happening like a far away melody. The person in the bed was bandaged, head to toe, in meticulous wrappings… asleep.

White Hat walked further into the room rather than lurking in the door, his other trailed after him, inquiring, “Is this the important person?” 

“I never knew him like this… Not really,” White Hat started to explain, voice catching, “I didn’t expect this. I knew it would be hard but—but not—not like… He looks so—” the words stopped coming, White Hat’s voice choking in his throat.

“Peaceful?” 

“Y-Yeah,” White Hat placed his hand over his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. 

The other looked from the warmth glowing inside White Hat to the figure in the bed. All dressed in pale, like a death shroud… “Who is he?”

“That’s what I’d like to know!” a new voice stated, chipper, before the lights above flickered to a brighter degree. Both Elder Beings turned to see a slightly tanned man enter. He was a little heartier than the other humans milling about in the hallways. Underneath his stereotypical doctor’s coat he wore button down checkered shirt with a solid color tie. A clipboard was in his hands and he walked over to check the machines before scribbling on it. “Nina told me he finally had visitors!”

White Hat held out his hand, “Hello, I’m—”

“Oh! You are that Hero!” the doctor exclaimed, surprise widening his eyes as he looked between the both of them, “White Cap?”

“White Hat,” they corrected simultaneously. Then turned to stare at each other for a beat. After a second the White Hat with a soul pointed at his other. 

“He’s from your world,” and then pressed a hand against his sternum again, but with less agitation, “I am… an alternate dimension White Hat, you could say.”

“I could say a lot of things,” the doctor joked. Neither Elder Being laughed. So, the human just tucked his board under his arm and motioned to the patient in the bed, turning somber, “Well, I can only assume this is an uncredited Hero?”

The alternate dimension White Hat paused, before settling with, “You may assume that, yes.”

“It would explain why he’s spent the better part of two decades in a hospital with no family and no other records to help us identify him,” the doctor said. 

“I’m—” White Hat began, then bit his tongue, “We’ll claim him. But, can you tell me the extent of his injuries?”

The doc’s eyes lit up, “Oh, of course!” and proceeded to ramble medical jargon. The White Hat with a soul listened intently, nodding at appropriate times. The other… felt out of sync. He was amazed, but mostly… lost. There was no keeping up with what the conversation was. He could not seem to grasp meaning in any of this day. 

He turned away from the animate human to the one lying still in the bed. He felt the urge to walk closer, examine the sleeping man on his own, but refrained. An important person?

Now that—that could mean a lot. 

There was more unsaid between the white spaces of the words.

_An important person._

Suddenly White Hat with a soul stood at the foot of the hospital bed, claws lightly scratching plastic dividers, and the doctor was leaving the room, mentioning something like, “—so I’ll find the discharge papers and be back in a few moments.”

Then the doctor was gone.

There was a beat of silence only filled by machines breathing for a sleeping man.

“What are we doing?” the other questioned, confused and slightly perturbed he had tuned out the entire conversation while staring at the sleeping human.

“You’re going to take him back home.”

“Home? Me?” the other White Hat parroted (out of order no less), before trying to catch the intense eye looking at the human in the hospital bed. _“Why?”_

White Hat spared him a measly glance before returning to stare at the injured man, “Because he’s—he’s—he’s important. That’s _why.”_

“Yes, but what does that mean? _Important?”_ he pressed this word as White Hat pressed the soul. He watched the golden glow coalesce from light into liquid lava that danced on pointed fingertips.

“It means… everything,” White Hat whispered, and the other leaned in to hear him, watching with fascination as the soul swam between his fingers, “It means that without him, I would not be who I am today.”

“So that soul belongs to him, in your dimension…”

White Hat nodded.

“You think he will yield his soul to me, in this dimension?” he wondered aloud.

White Hat closed his fingers around the golden soul, one baleful blue eye trained on his other. “No. I don’t.”

“Then what is the _point?”_

“The _point_ is you need help—you need him,” White Hat snapped. His other huffed, but conceded. Then, with a deep sigh, White Hat slowly released the soul from its protected palm. “I do not know how to explain this to you. Not in a way you would understand right now. You’re too… removed. Seeing you—seeing what I must have been—is an… unpleasant… experience.” White Hat looked over pleading, “All I can do is ask you to trust me.”

“You are me,” the other replied, “You are Good.”

White Hat chuckled, “Well, not good enough.”

The other briefly crossed his arms, offended.

“Not yet, anyway. You can be, though. But you need someone completely human.”

“I do not understand…” 

“I know,” White Hat smiled then, like it was a joke, “He’ll teach you better than I ever could.”

The other wanted to argue—who could teach him to be more powerful other than himself? 

The White Hat with a soul just sighed, moving to sit on the bed beside the human. “You—I—lived life with one purpose… to defeat Evil. Black Hat.” He stared sadly at the lines of the person lying, unmoving, in the hospital bed. “And then he came crashing in… and suddenly I—I had more to live for. To care about. He taught me how to—how to use my powers for more than just… fighting. The things I learned about being truly Good and Kind and Caring… It’s all from him. I want to be who he believes me to be—sometimes more.”

The other Elder Being floated to stand beside the head of the bed. The man looked like a mummy. It reminded him of the early humans he encountered… the reasons he fears taking souls in the first place. How strange this same man at another time, in another place, could make him so brave he would think to keep this man’s soul. Did he not know the peril? “I suppose he wished for strength? After being hospitalized so, this is why he would come to you?”

“No,” White Hat shook his head, “No… it was a long story but he…”

There was silence again, save of course, for the rhythmic whirring and beeps from the machines around them.

“When I met him, he was a Villain.”

“What…?” the other almost gasped, staggering away from the human as if burned.

White Hat nodded, gesturing to an empty, dusty seat opposite the hospital bed, “It will be a long story, and perhaps, you can find answers in some of it.”

The story was indeed long. White Hat watched his other, who became enraptured by the unfolding of the tale, almost as if he could not believe a word of it. Even to the original White Hat, it felt like something painstakingly unreal… and yet, he lived it. He wished to return to this unimaginable life. Not remain in this nightmare realm where Slug had no justice, where Clem lived ill and unwanted, where 0.5.0. was not created at all… all his friends living but far away from him. The world one good shake from shattering like a cracked snowglobe.

The White Hat with a soul looked at his beloved, who was not his, nor beloved by him in this timeline, “Can you not see how crucial he is? Without him it’s as if this world is… This world is fading into nothing. You need him to guide you.”

“Are you so certain?” his other questioned, “That one man—one person—can make a difference in this world?”

“He made a difference in mine.”

His other stayed quiet.

“At least try…” White Hat started. He glanced away from the sleeping face to his reflection. 

The other was staring at the human now, eye ablaze in its frosted hue, “I cannot see much of a soul in him.”

White Hat blinked, letting the second sight flare to life in his eye. He trained it on this dimension’s Slug. Instead of the golden blaze like a furnace bellowing out, there was merely a spark. An ember sputtering and puffing. 

“I see. No wonder he sleeps… his soul feels satisfied…” White Hat placed his hand on the man’s sternum, over that ember, “When have you ever been satisfied, Dear?”

The other tilts his head, “He has been too injured, left to rot in this place… Who could be satisfied with that?”

“If he thought it was for the best—” White Hat begins, then shakes his head, “It is of no use to explain Slug’s actions. He will explain them himself. Once we wake him.”

“Oh? And how do you propose we do that?”

White Hat flicked an irritated eye to the soulless him, before taking his hand and pulling out the golden soul, “Well, _you_ can do nothing… but, we—Me and Slug—can maybe jumpstart something.”

“The soul from your world…” the Elder Being breathed, standing to get a better look, “You fear touching me least something happen to this precious soul and yet—”

“Well, it belongs him. I’m just holding it for a while,” White Hat explained with a smile.

The other said nothing, missing another point entirely, and White Hat went back to the sleeping man. He held Slug’s soul with as much care as one would something easily shattered. Gold doesn’t shatter, though, no. You can use gold to mend things—it seeps between the cracks of porcelain and binds the broken to be something stronger than it was before. That’s what Slug did for White Hat, and now it was his turn to repay such a favor.

He was careful though, because in theory the idea was good. In practice? He did not want to lose his Slug back in his dimension. Just a little bit of contact—a small amount—like breathing on campfire. White Hat could do that. 

He dipped the tip of his finger into the soul, collecting a little. He kissed it, feeling the warmth, before leaning down… over the man’s heart. How many times had he found himself doing so? Slug breathed so slow, so even. He wanted skin contact, and found a sliver untouched by bandages. Just the slightest hint of red through the white. He brushed his lips there—

A few things happened, dramatically, instantly. 

The room shortened out—all electricity cut off. The machines silenced in a pop. There was a spark—actually the ignition of the sleeping Slug was more like a violent implosion. It was as if White Hat had shocked the man’s entire system. Slug’s previously immobile body jack-knifed to a sitting position. The White Hat sitting followed suit, nearly falling off the bed in surprise. Then again, he had never really given a soul back before—even if this wasn’t quite what he was trying to do. The other White Hat also stepped back, shielding himself from the volcano of a soul that brightened the room like a supernova suddenly.

Slug was panting as if he’d finished a marathon, holding both palms to his chest as he tried to struggle with breathing through some difficulty, before finding a device strapped to his face. The lights above them broke, littering the occupants in the room with a shower of sparks that bounced along the tiled floor. 

“Ow…” the man rasped, tugging out tubes and lines with shaking hands. He blurrily looked about the dark room, voice croaking, “Don’t… tell me… I went blind?”

White Hat, without a soul, graciously flicked out a hand and held a ball of illumination. “Is that better?”

Slug squinted, and the White Hat with a soul rolled over onto his feet and felt the wall for the window blinds. He pulled them back and natural light came streaming into the room.

“Ah,” the other Elder Being said, extinguishing the ball. With a shaking hand, Slug carefully dabbed at his unused eyes. 

They were still a bewitching, earthy brown White Hat noted when they landed on him. It was hard to see through the copious bandages, but it looked like Slug was less confused and more curious…

“White Hat?” his name was a question, and the human shook his head, but still clutched at his chest. Exhausted, he struggled to remove sheets from his body, and the White Hat with a soul stopped him.

“You are still unwell, rest,” he suggested. The human looked from him to the other White Hat. 

With another shake of the head, he stared at the other, “… how long?”

“Excuse me?” the other Elder Being asked, more than unsettled by such a question.

The human—named Slug—seemed to have difficulty find words. His mouth opened, but he could not say much past his perhaps overwhelming pain. The White Hat with a soul looked between the two, expression inexplicable. He patted the human’s knee to get his attention.

“I am sorry, Dr. Slug… in this world, you have been in a coma for many years. At least 18, maybe 20, if I had to guess…” he said, “And I do not know why. Neither of us do.”

Slug pointed between them. A breath stalled inside him, and then he nodded. 

“I remember… fire… and… I was the only one left—” one of Slug’s hands fell on top of White Hat’s, “In your world… and this one. Only I was left in the house.”

White Hat seemed to droop, “I see. They were safe, and so you…”

“I was fine with dying… so they didn’t have to,” Slug finished. 

The other Elder Being looked at him curious, “But you survived still?”

Slug gave a shrug, “Hard to kill… a pest.”

…

Needless to say—but it will be—once the doctor returned and saw his forever patient awake and intelligibly communicating, there was quite a commotion. Of course, the medical community wanted to know exactly how a coma patient could awaken with minimal complication. No one liked the idea of “cosmic healing power.” People wanted to know more, but the White Hat with a Soul decided that wasn’t important, and as soon as the doctors reluctantly gave discharge papers, the trio disappeared. 

Not into the unknown, just back to White Hat Manor. Slug was still covered in bandages, some scrubs lent to him, slowly making notes at the desk. He was sitting, mostly silent, recovering slowly in a way White Hat had never known him to. The other Elder Being was making chalk marks on the open space of his office floor, also quiet. White Hat pressed against the glowing soul, feeling not as uncertain as he probably should have been.

He walked over to Slug, pressing his other hand against a clothed cheek. The low hum of human pain was hiding under his skin, and White Hat healed it in a wash of a cooling wave. For some reason, his Dear Doctor was drawn to the ocean and always told White Hat being healed should feel like the flow of water. It was soothing, he explained once. This Slug would seem to agree, the rigid tension of his body smoothing out as White Hat seeped the pain out of him.

“Better?” he asked, soft and sure. 

Slug grunted, stealing a glance up to the White Hat now leaning against the desk.

“Yes, my dear?”

“You didn’t have to,” he muttered, securing the edge of a bandage that had been ruffled under the healing touch. 

“I wanted to,” was the assurance, followed by another secret as he leaned closer to say, “I needed to.”

“I’m not talking about the—“ Slug started, hands gesturing about his face, “I’m talking about back at the hospital…” The man trailed off, looking down at his list. He was shaking his head as he looked back at White Hat, who was staring at him with such a gentle blue eye, “I was… fine. I didn’t… need to be… awake, I guess. I survived but… in this world there wasn’t a need for me to be… alive.”

White Hat did not speak for a moment, expression slowly turning anguished. Finally, he looked away. Slug followed the movement, finding they were watching the other Elder Being who was concentrating on drawing the correct sigils on the ground. Washed out, covered in chalk, a gray-blue tongue poking out in the effort to make sure everything was perfect. The White Hat with a soul gave such a heartbroken sigh, “This is not true. I don’t believe there is ever a world where you are not needed… This world needs you to live, if it will get better, it will only do so if you are alive to see it happen.”

Slug had no words… but the other Elder Being finally righted himself and walked over to the pair, pointing with little confidence, “I am done. White Hat, you may go back to your dimension now.”

The White Hat with a soul nodded, standing upright. Both the pale creatures stood before the other—untouching. The human rose from his seat as well, lightly pressing fingers to the glowing White Hat’s wrist, but not quite shaking his hand. It was probably all he could manage as he was healing and tired.

“Thank you, I suppose, I’ll do what I can… to help,” he managed to say. 

White Hat smiled, “I know you will.”

“Do not worry,” the other said, standing still, upright and proud. White Hat with a soul thought it was sort of arrogant and dick-ish. No wonder Dr. Slug was so hard on him in the beginning, “I will take the utmost care of this man.”

“Yeah, you better,” he warned, smile dropping slightly. He shook off his irritation and gave this Slug once last burst of calm healing… and then he stepped into the chalk circle. 

He was better prepared for the sensation of dimension hopping—and the pressure of it caused his non-eardrums to pop (or, maybe probably explode? Who knows, he wasn’t human). White Hat felt himself literally drop. He had a bad habit of crashing—and crash he did. Somehow, he ended up embedded in the staircase. So, he just laid there for a while, only semi-confident he was in the right dimension. The soul in his chest was immediately aflurry.

His Slug came sliding into view after a few moments. No mask, all concerned earthy eyes and shiny-pink skin of decades of diligent healing magics. The man was shouting at him, stepping over rubble and yanking White Hat’s limbs this way and that, scanning for damage. White Hat was uncertain why until Slug’s hands came away with the shrapnel that is Elder tears. White Hat clasped his Dear Doctor’s hands between his, laughing in relief, crying apparently as well. Slug was more than startled. 

“I’m—I’m home,” White Hat managed to say between unnecessary breathes, and the soul inside him swirled around, relieved, but confused, “You’re home.”

“I never left—” Slug said, shaking his head, trying to untangle their hands to continue examining his love. White Hat just pulled him in close, more than glad he could do that.

Slug let him, in his boundless compassionate wisdom, somehow knowing that’s what White Hat needed at that moment. They stayed like that for a while, Slug faux-grumbling about being tired, about the mess, but never about White Hat clinging to him. The Elder Being pulled back, grasping the man and staring at him, memorizing the years of differences. 

“Have I ever told you how happy I am that I met you?”

“Uh—What? Why—?!”

White Hat soundly kissed him, desperate and begging.

Slug let him, responding slowly, before sighing and wrapping arms around him. Apparently, explanations would wait until the morning.

…

The morning came and went, Slug in his lab, working on a project when White Hat finally entered. The doctor sighed, feeling the strange stirring of his soul from so far away. Though located outside his body, he felt it still, through White Hat’s emotions. White Hat was pulling off his safety goggles, lying down his equipment for him, and holding him… 

The explanation of what happened to the Elder Being was more like a bad dream. Slug wished he could say it was, but it was clear that the multiple universe theory existed, if only because it explained the presence of beings like his employer-slash-husband. White Hat was affected by it so strongly, and Slug suspected he would be for a long while.

“You know,” Slug said, running his palm along the taunt line of White Hat’s bicep as it flexed around the doctor’s middle, “I never gave much thought to what life would have been like if we never met.”

White Hat gulped, “Neither had I…”

“The world was so awful?” Slug teased.

“The world…” he paused, “It was so different.”

“Different isn’t bad,” the doctor reminded him, turning around to face the Elder Being.

“No, different is not bad—” White Hat agreed, then bit his tongue. Slug hummed, continuing to run his hands up to White Hat’s lovely face. He gently traced the damaged edges of White Hat’s eye socket. The ring on his finger almost gleamed wet in the dim light of the lab. “But for me… for the White Hat that was without you in his life…”

Slug nodded, understanding the words White Hat could not say… he felt them instead. They dripped into the golden glow of his soul, nearly dimming the ever-present light that lived within White Hat’s chest. “He was not you, though…”

“He was! There is only ever one White Hat in existence and—” the Meta-Physics of the issue seemed to spew forth, unbidden, and Slug silenced it by placing his fingers to White Hat’s babbling mouth. 

“No…” Slug said, shaking his head, “No… I don’t think there is another like you in any other universe.”

White Hat stared down at his dear doctor. It took a great shuddering breath, but finally he nodded in agreeance with Slug.

The man smiled at him, a bit cheeky, “So… we met. Our lives are inextricably linked—apparently in any dimension or universe or whatever and—That’s that. Why are you so concerned about should-haves and would-haves?”

“I just—” White Hat sighed, “I hate the thought of it. The idea of you, somewhere else. Alone and in pain, for years, and I never knew…”

Slug found it difficult to look his husband in the eye, fingers trailing down to fix a collar. He had left his clothes so casual and disheveled. Normally, it was incredibly attractive. White Hat was almost always so proper and stuffy and good-looking in a suit… but knowing what White Hat shared with him… perhaps it was a form of self-protest. A reminder that he had grown. He had become… more human, better. Connected to something, not an image of the ultimate form of Good.

“Oh, _me amour_ ,” he breathed.

“I did the right thing… I think,” White Hat said, gripping the man’s hands to stop him from smoothing out the wrinkles in his dress shirt.

Slug sighs, finding the courage to fondly roll his eyes upwards, “You always do what’s right.”

“Because I had you,” White Hat admits without irony, without bitterness. He is just… earnest. He means it with everything. Slug’s soul glows. He hardly believes such a beautiful thing could belong to him.

“You were good before you met me,” Slug points out.

“I was no more than an untethered soldier,” White Hat shakes his head, “I understood order and life were my duties. I only ever wanted to win against whatever Black Hat stood for…” The doctor is staring at White Hat’s lovely blue eye now, as it gleams so pretty even in the dimness of the lab, “You taught me that wasn’t enough. I didn’t understand what it meant until I almost lost you. Until you gave me—You made me realize what was really important to me.”

Slug felt his face heat up and shot his gaze away again, “I swear to god if you say something cheesy like—”

“I love you.”

Slug’s mouth clamped shut.

“And I only want to continue to be good—be a Hero, if you are by my side to help me. It’s… hard. But, if we work together, I think we can figure something out,” White Hat said. Slug stared up at his love, finding it was more than _hard._ It was like a lump of diamond had wedged itself in the spaces of Slug’s empty chest.

“Yeah, it’s tough…” he whispered, then rested his forehead on White Hat’s shoulder, “I don’t even want to think what it would have been like if I hadn’t come to you for help… If I had been alone to work through the pain I—” White Hat’s hand rested on the back of his head, and Slug felt grounded… at peace. “I guess I was lucky. Having you. Having Clem… Cero. All our friends we made—”

“And lost,” White Hat whispered, claws lightly scraping at his scalp in reflex.

“I am sorry you had to experience it,” Slug murmured, lips pressing the words into his skin. He wound his arms around White Hat’s back as if to hold him in this dimension, “I don’t envy you… or the other you that could have been…”

“And the _you_ that—” White Hat started, Slug shushed him.

“I am right in front of you.”

White Hat looked like he wanted to argue, but he gave him a soft kiss on the lips, pulling back to say, “That’s what matters most to me in the end. I can’t bare to imagine a world without you.”

“I know,” Slug said, “And you don’t have to anymore… no one does in this universe.”

But? In another…

That's a different story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked!
> 
> As always, feel free to ask any questions, I will do my best to answer! As for whatever reason, I am also having email issues (ie, can't open stuff on my phone and have to log in on an actual desktop/laptop).


	4. We'll Start By Pointing Out the Differences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS FIRST:
> 
> Fire PTSD. Loneliness. Vague stuff? Mostly just a bit of swearing.
> 
> NEXT funny story:
> 
> I was like, seriously and raptly waiting for comments, because this is a really strange fic (in my opinion). This is literally a fanfic of my own fanfic of a vague AU in a cartoon fandom... and I just don't often write AU's like this.
> 
> But most of the time I write to work through trauma or big philosophy ideas... and I have just been dealing with a lot of "What-If's" in my head so. I am coming back to some favorite characters. I wanted to share the fic quickly just because a lot of people are stuck at home (and I am not unfortunately, my day to day life has been unchanged in this pandemic)...
> 
> So anyways, long story short, I was not receiving emails about the latest chapter and was like, "Oh, maybe people don't like it--or went back and realized they didn't like the first one enough to hop on board with this idea"  
> But, oh well, I finished this next bit. I'll upload anyways.
> 
> AND THEN I SEE, A03 has server maintaince going on and emails aren't always getting through. So I check out the unread messages on my dashboard, and see exactly one nice comment and. Yeah.
> 
> That comment really made my day. Thank you. 
> 
> Please enjoy what little I have to give.

Chapter 3: We’ll Start by Pointing Out the Differences

  
Here is the thing about parallel realities—if you subscribe to the multiple universe theory, the real one, not the Hollywood depiction—the world parallel has a very narrow definition. For example, in mathematics, if something is parallel, such as a line, it can never touch the other line it travels next to. So, when one speaks of a parallel universe, a parallel reality, a parallel plane of existence… these two dimensions never cross over, no matter how close the lines appear to travel beside one another. There will always be some degree of separation.

Slug—Dr. Slug to his enemies—was above all a scientist. He knew the theoretical frameworks, the math, all the things he needed to know to own his several doctorates. In fact, he never stopped gathering information, both a polyglot and a polymath, Slug was always learning and relearning things. Dr. Slug was aware of the growing expansion of the universe, of possibly unraveling differing realities… 

He was in the midst of it, actually.

Slug was now a single, unique entity in his world of having lived two lives in two realities.

One day he was young, late twenties or early thirties (no one would ever get a straight answer from him, because even he was unsure), with a wife and child. Then, a fire and they died. He swore eternal vengeance, found another family, and was happily remarried to an intergalactic oddity (for probably the rest of eternity?).

Well, except, Slug did not actually experience that.

Slug remembers leaving the house—except that he didn’t. No, he was awoken in the night and only made it to the backdoor. He had not yet opened it to make his phone call. When he was outside, he was in. He recalled feeling overheated, he stops because Miranda shortly left their bedroom. All he did was hold the phone, awkward and apologetic. 

“I can’t sleep anyways… bad omens,” she had whispered. She was sweating. He was sweating.

He went to get them water from the tap—only to find there was none. He was not outside, he was inside… but he was outside where more memories tell him the flow of water was cut-off even from the garden hose. The fire erupted and spread not long after that. Miranda immediately rushed to their daughter’s room…

He should have been outside, panicking, but instead, he is pouring the last of Ama’s nighttime glass of water over a blanket and wrapping her in it. Miranda is crying—he remembers crying in both memories. There is screaming as he breaks windows in both. He built his daughter a special escape window. Smokes fills the house, choking and snaking it’s way into his lungs. A beam breaks—he feels it hit his back, but it doesn’t. Not now. Right now, he’s shoving Ama through the window and Miranda has bloodied hands. His hands burn in the memories that are his and not his, but they are his burns all the same.

“What do we do?” Miranda screams, but she doesn’t, she’s just frantic.

Slug shakes his head, and yet he doesn’t, listening to the screams and trying to scream as he fights to save them, “We don’t do anything… go, you can fit too—”

She goes to ask how, but Slug pops out her shoulder socket, and hates himself for not saving her—for having to save her through such cruelty—and helping her scramble through the hidden window. He hadn’t meant to keep it secret from Miranda, but he never predicted arson. He should have.

Slug can’t fit, even if he had dislocated both his arms, but he can crawl into a corner—Miranda and Ama’s very same corner they huddled together and burned to death in—before the smoke makes him pass out. He stays asleep—but he wakes, screaming for the dead—and does not get up until White Hat reminds the good doctor (because apparently, he is a good guy, who knew?) he is still alive.

Except the White Hat who is standing beside him now is not White Hat—well, he is. Just… not the same.

“I hate this, I want you to know that,” Slug said, sighing as he leafed through paperwork in a giant box hidden under the desk. Pages were dated into the 18th century. 

White Hat hovered over him, “Why?”

“Why, he asks…!” Slug grumbled. White Hat—cool and colorless—nodded, picking up a paper. 

“I, at least, keep records,” White Hat pointed at something that was nearly illegible due to age (and Slug’s old eyesight), “Heroes are older than people think.”

“Your memory is boundless! What do you need paper records for?!” Slug demanded. It doesn’t feel like the first time he has said this. White Hat ends up shrugging—which is a gesture he has decided he wanted to try out this week. It is the first time he has arguably used the movement correctly. Slug decides he should probably buy stickers to put on White Hat’s suit jacket when he gets “human-ness” correct so that way the successes will not have to derail their conversations in the future. He sighs, looking down at his hands, “I am going to have to digitize so much…”

White Hat looks at Slug’s stiff, uncoordinated hands as well, “I can heal those if you need—”

“I just need to move them more,” Slug interrupts, flexing his fingers instead of looking up at White Hat.

“If you resist it makes the process take longer,” White Hat told him. Slug folded his arms across his chest, hiding said hands.

“I am not resisting,” he said, trying not too terribly hard to sound bitter, “I just don’t have much choice.” White Hat made a slight face, one that meant Slug was poking at his carefully crafted world-view again with certain words, “It’s either your healing radiation, or continuous and cautious physical therapy.”

The Elder Being shrugged again—seeming to think it meant he didn’t have words to add in the conversation. Slug tsked and shook his head in response. White Hat gave a sigh that meant he understood he had not exactly grasped the concept of the “shrug” gesture.

“In any case, I set up an appointment with…” Slug paused, racking his brain for the correct name—coming up with a few that were associated with fuzzy memories, “Sky Fox. He has a private satellite monitoring the planet. If you can get me access to it, I believe I can find you Heroes that would be willing to listen to you.”

White Hat nodded. Slug placed a hand on the desk to stand, feeling fine, but White Hat was already at his side to help. The doctor swatted him away, “I’m not an invalid!”

“You are in pain,” he stated. 

Slug opened his mouth to argue, but found himself realizing there was numbness spreading through his limbs. “Ah… I see, I must have sat on the floor for too long.”

“Yes, I should have put the box on the table…” White Hat realized, eye widening, “That would have been more helpful.”

“I didn’t think about it either,” Slug said, remembering his body was more broken than he felt. He could feel his soul perhaps better than the common man. It felt hearty and whole, willing where his body was weak. 

White Hat shook his head, “I need to take care of you.”

“Sure,” the doctor muttered, “You taking care of me. That’s why I’m here…”

White Hat did not shrug this time. He let his silence speak for itself. If Slug hadn’t known more than he should, he would assume that meant White Hat was perhaps mad, or even did not understand the jab. No, White Hat, in his infinite life, was simply uncertain what he could say to offer assurance, offer comfort for someone in a pain that was not physical.

Slug didn’t take the records, just fiddled with the brand-new computer on the desk, before nodding at the box. “Take it to my lab when done with the interview. Don’t let Sky Fox get out of this team-up… we need this.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

…

Sky Fox was a man of mystery. He growled more than used words. He shrouded himself in darkness, imposing and frightening. White Hat had met scarier but, this was one of the few Heroes who had made a name for himself. He ruled over a small group of people and globally these human Heroes worked for the betterment of mankind… supposedly. Sky Fox was mostly interested, it seemed, in cataloguing humans with preternatural abilities. 

Sky Fox had an official ward, or perhaps more accurately, a predecessor: Sparrow Heart. He was more charming than the brooding figure in the corner of the video call, his white smile almost blinding in his deep earth-brown face, “I don’t see why we wouldn’t give you the records—Heroes should always help one another!”

Sky Fox huffed behind the young man, and White Hat nodded.

“Buuuuuuuuuut,” the lad suddenly drawled out, fingers dancing across the keys, “You haven’t really told us… why.”

“Why?” White Hat parroted. 

“Yeah, why.”

White Hat shook his head—another human gesture he was practicing, “Why do I need help?”

“Why do you want our records?” Sparrow Heart asked. He did so with an innocent curiosity. His eyes almost sparkled behind his yellow and red mask. White Hat shrugged—it became an automatic response. This was apparently wrong because Sparrow Heart frowned, looking behind him to Sky Fox. The imposing older human slammed his hands on the desk and growled at White Hat.

“You’ve done nothing to help for years—and now you want to know what we know?” he all but snarled, and then shot a look at Sparrow Heart, “I’m done here. I told you this was a waste of time—”

“Wait—” White Hat started, but Sky Fox had already slunk out of the video chat. Sparrow Heart sighed, hand held over a keyboard, patiently waiting for White Hat to continue. White Hat opened and closed his mouth several times but… no words came to him.

“If you have nothing, Sir, we can offer you nothing.”

“I—” White Hat forced himself to say, finding only the cracked truth scattering in front of him, “I am trying.”

Sparrow Heart’s brows furrowed, head tilting, “… trying, Sir?”

“I… That is—What I mean…” White Hat struggled to explain himself. Sparrow Heart sighed, hand leaving it’s position over the end-call-button. 

“Does this have something to with the spotting around your city of two White Hats?” the lad asked, perhaps in an effort to be helpful.

It should not have surprised White Hat as much as it did. Dr. Slug had warned him that Sky Fox and his ward were perhaps the most connected Heroes, and they would be distrusting of his intentions in the beginning. Still, White Hat felt very much seen in a distinctly uncomfortable way. He had spent so long observing, with little of his time actually among humans unless they dared to enter his doorway… he was much too intimidating, apparently… “You could say that, yes.”

“I see, a, uh, splitting-of-the-soul-situation, yeah?” Sparrow Heart was offering him an explanation. One that sounded as if humans suffered from such a situation before.

“I have no soul,” White Hat said. It was a fact. It could not come out bitter. One cannot miss something that was never theirs. He pressed one cold hand to his chest, recalling the Golden Glow that he had become familiar with. Seeing himself like that—but no. That was not his story.

“Ohh… I… didn’t know that… was even possible,” Sparrow Heart said after a few beats of awkward silence. 

White Hat stopped pressing his hand against his empty chest. “Not many humans know about me. I have not been… involved… as I should be. I have a duty to help the Good of the world, and I have been more strict with myself than was perhaps necessary. I need to rectify that mistake as soon as possible.”

“Sounds... urgent,” Sparrow Heart said, looking increasingly uncomfortable, “And you need our records to do this?”

“The Heroes of this world are too scattered. Alone,” White Hat emphasized, “And it has become abundantly clear to me… no one can survive this world alone. We need to help each other if we mean to make a difference against cruelty and pain and—” 

White Hat had been ramping up, perhaps puffing up as he remembered why he was on Earth in the first place. Sparrow Heart held up his hands, trying to calm the Elder Being, “Yeah, yeah, I agree, White Hat, Sir!”

White Hat settled, realized he was flooded with embarrassment. He checked his body for any general… well, he supposed humans might call them tentacles. They were mortifying whenever they slipped out of him in excitement. “So—you will help me?”

“Err…” Sparrow Heart wavered for a moment, “We—er—Yeah. Yeah, I’ll help.”

“Oh! Thank you!” White Hat did stand from his seat, almost bouncing on his feet in triumph.

“Sure, but, don’t thank me yet… I mean when Sky Fox finds out—”

“He should be proud of you!” White Hat said, “It never hurts to help.”

Sparrow Heart shrugged and began tapping away on another keyboard, “Maybe for other people…”

“Oh!” White Hat pointed, “A shrug! What does it mean when you shrug?”

The lad gave him a wide-eyed looked. He shook it off before laughing. He explained what shrugging meant (at least to him) and White Hat nodded as the conversation was quite pleasant, indeed. He was learning new things every day.

…

Slug had only been awake a week, and in that week, had already ordered a fast-moving renovator to build him a lab with an accompanying bedroom. At first, he thought perhaps the upstairs should have bedrooms… but he was the only one who needed sleep in the Manor. White Hat had government subsidies up the wahzoo, and Slug was not up to the task to immediately sort through (where from) and why all this money was coming in…

Still, when you have money, things can move quickly, and also without question. Slug had a lab and a bedroom with an ensuite bath in a week. He had a company deliver him fresh produce and meat to stock the kitchen, and despite the sterile coloring, the Manor’s bottom floor was more or less hospitable for him… it felt vaguely wrong, but there was no point fixing the upstairs for any living quarters.

However, being farther from White Hat’s healing presence caused him to slow down incredibly. Lying in bed for twenty-some odd years was proving that his body was not moving very well without the Elder Being’s unnatural (preternatural? Supernatural?) ability to fix the organic material around him. Slug was sighing, flexing his hands as he applied ointment to them. He had one important call of his own to make.

He sat before his large monitor and, intuitively, hacked into a central security system in Black Hat Manor. It took a moment, but Dr. Flug’s bagged face flashed onto his screen. Slug sat back in his seat as the other human looked at him with slight annoyance and awe if his communicative goggles indicated anything.

“Well hello, Doctor,” Slug said, less impressed. 

Dr. Flug peered closer, “Am I supposed to know who you are?”

“Nope!” Slug said, popping the ‘p’ on the word as he reached over and held up a blank check, “And it won’t matter much. I am just ordering a catalogue.”

“Oh!” Dr. Flug went cheerful and folded him hands in his lap, “I see! Well, first time orders are free! We can get you a subscription, and, 20% off your first order if you buy the Black Package—”

“Hmm, sounds like a steal,” Slug said dryly, tossing the checkbook onto the desk with a bit of relief. He was not fond of how slow his hands were moving…

Dr. Flug chuckled at his joke, “Very astute, Sir. Just let me know where to send your copy. We can either deliver via encoded address or a safety drop box.”

“Not necessary,” Slug explained, sitting straighter and staring directly at the other Doctor. It felt important to establish who was really in charge in this interaction, “Send it to White Hat Manor, regular carrier should do just fine.”

Dr. Flug paused, looking up from some basic shipping label on his desk to the screen to take in Dr. Slug’s bandaged face. Slug had made sure the lighting was adequate for studying every ugly feature possible. 

“White… Hat… Manor?” the question was slow and perhaps vaguely wary.

“Ummhmm,” Slug nodded with an affirmative hum.

“So you…” Dr. Flug’s goggles narrowed as his sentence seemed loaded with some kind of unfinished question, instilling the man behind the bag with an unprecedented amount of tension.

“I’ll be working with White Hat from now on,” Slug explained, “And I plan to be as big a nuisance to you and your organization, Dr. Flug, as I can be.”

Dr. Flug gulped, but gave his own nod in response. 

“Good. Promptly send me a catalogue—” Slug reached over to hit the off button on his monitor, then waited a beat, “—you know, I’ll decide on a subscription later. But, don’t worry. I’ll let you know in a bit.”

“Wait!” Flug exclaimed, “I don’t get a name?”

“Oh,” the burned doctor gave his best fake laugh, “How rude of me. Of course—make it out to Dr. Slug. Former Villain… Not quite Hero Yet. We’ll see.”

He cut off communication without waiting for a response and wiped his hard drives, and set up a new router he had set off to the side before making his “call.”

…

Slug is making dinner—and he feels… he feels like something is missing. He is chopping vegetables. Celery, carrots, potatoes. He is careful, as always. It feels weird. Something feels… wrong. It takes him a minute but he realizes—

His hand has just dropped his cut ingredients in the chicken broth. He wished had enough stock for a bone broth instead but the cubed stuff from a grocery store will have to do for now. He could go to a butcher’s later—the one on the corner of—

And Slug realizes he should not know the layout of the neighborhood well yet. He looks down at his hands again, startled, that they look so different from memories he should not have. 

“These… don’t belong to me,” he whispers, aloud, as if someone would be with him right now, in this kitchen. No one is. He feels foolish, and worse, he is unsure if he is talking about his hands or his memories that should not be.

Slug looks around the kitchen, devoid of color. It’s almost sparklingly white. Like some sort of futuristic ideal of cleanliness… but what it is is lifeless. No one is waiting at a table, whose underside is covered in magical stickers of princesses and unicorns. No placemats are positioned for the occupants of the house. There are no smudgy fingerprints on the doors, no splashes of food that stain the grout of the countertops… 

Slug feels alone in a way he has never felt before.

The next thing he asks, soul sinking is, “White Hat lives like this?”

Slug waits for an answer. 

After an hour, perhaps, staring at the door for someone, anyone to join him, he places his soup on simmer and goes looking for his love—

No. His employer. 

White Hat is nothing more than his new boss.

He must remember that before he remembers things that are not his to remember.

White Hat is writing at his desk, shining, sparkling like a star, almost. Slug knows deep in his soul that the Elder Being is experiencing happiness—or at least, triumph. Pride perhaps. He looks up at Slug—he does not smile, no, he has not mastered that expression yet, and it takes Slug a moment because it feels like he should see one… but the expression does not come. Slug almost has a sense of vertigo. 

“I have a list of names to contact here in the States!”

“Uh,” Slug finds himself trying to understand, and while he does grasp the concept of these words, there is something upsetting him. He cannot name it so much as he can feel it, “Right. And you waited for me to come up here because…?”

White Hat opens his mouth, then shakes his head and stands instead, “I have heard the phrase nine to five?”

“And?”

“It’s—” White Hat pokes at his computer screen, and though Slug cannot see it, knows it’s probably the timestamp in the corner, “10:39 PM. So… no work, right?”

Slug ends up shaking his head, “Did you say it’s—it’s after 10 PM?”

White Hat pokes at his screen again, like that is an affirmative response.

“That’s really late, White Hat,” the doctor says instead, standing in the office doorway and looking around, at anything other than the person causing this odd fluttering in his chest, in his head, “What—What have you been doing in here since we talked this morning?”

White Hat, again, is non-verbal—pointing to whatever he was writing on his pad of paper at his desk. The box of his previous scribblings is still sitting on the corner. 

Slug wants to be angry, and maybe part of him is. He should feel forgotten. He almost does feel forgotten… but right then, in his chest, he feels an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. It almost hurts—this heaviness. His hand clutches the doorknob, and he shakes his head, “I—I made dinner. Come down.”

“Oh,” White Hat is blinking at him, “I do not need to eat.”

“Come down—” Slug manages to choke out words, before clearing his throat, “Do it anyway. I’m human and I need to eat so… fucking deal, I guess.”

White Hat briefly looks offended—and Slug only knows this because his soul must know this as White Hat’s expression is seemingly unchanged, body stance as rigid as ever, “I am working…?”

“Nine-to-five, asshat,” the doctor shoots back, opening the door wider, urging his employer to close the gap between them.

White Hat deflates a little, as if his whole-body sighs in reluctance.

“Do it for me—” Slug starts, but finds he has to bite his words back into his mouth. He lets go of the door and crosses his arms instead, “We’ve been apart too long and I’m…” Slug hesitates. He could say so many things. None of which this White Hat will understand. “My body is old and—and broken. Making soup has taken me fucking hours and I am hungry, man. I need food and sleep and—”

“Alright,” White Hat says, and Slug nearly wishes it was said with a softness he recalls from somewhere else. Instead, the Elder Being is placating, even slightly guilty. He walks close to Slug—but is not in his space. Slug is looking up at him, and cannot find words anymore. “I understand.”

Slug’s soul feels like it’s bubbling over, perhaps like his soup down below them, though he has no way of knowing for sure. He has to look away from the lovely face looking down at him. “Yeah… I don’t think you do.”

“Well,” White Hat barely concedes, “Perhaps not yet. That is what you are here for, right Dr. Slug?”

Slug swallows the scream inside.

“I will endeavor to remain at your side more often,” White Hat does not really promise, but there is an undercurrent of duty in the words.

“Oh, well, don’t trouble yourself over me!” Slug snarks, deciding to turn tail and run. He’s slow going and White Hat follows easily, gliding behind him bemusedly. Slug aches in White Hat’s presence, even though he can feel his body healing. Of course, this ache has nothing to do with the body. 

Slug spoons his soup into two bowls, and leaves one in front of White Hat at the counter. They do not sit at the small table. They do not speak. The silence is not awkward—but there is no comfort in it either. They simply exist beside one another… and if possible…

  
Slug feels even more lonely than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments, questions, queries, are always welcome.
> 
> Thank you so much!
> 
> I hope everyone who read this is doing a little bit better today.
> 
> Unfortunately, no updating schedule as I am just writing when I have what little time I got to myself (which isn't a lot at the moment). Working on the next chapter and we'll see what happens.


	5. We'll Start With Something Else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS:
> 
> Swearing?  
> Bit of generally painful descriptions?
> 
> Angst.
> 
> Definitely un-beta'd, but please enjoy nonetheless!

Chapter Four: We’ll Start With Something Else

  
“Is this bad luck?” Slug asks, standing in front of a mirror. White Hat is behind him, glowing, ethereal. Beautiful. They look the oddest couple, because of course they do. Slug has his arms crossed, and White Hat is tying a necktie for his soon-to-be husband using a mirror. 

  
“I thought that was for brides,” White Hat said, and he’s absolutely beaming. Slug rolls his eyes.

  
“I am not going to wear a dress.”

  
“I never asked, Dear.”

  
“You could probably look cute in one though,” Slug decides to tease, masking his nerves. White Hat lets out a bark of laughter. His fingers smooth down the tie. They come into contact with Slug’s arms. He untangles Slug’s arms as deftly as they previously knotted an intricate, gorgeous golden tie. 

  
“There’s no need to be nervous, my love,” he murmurs, hugging the dear doctor into his chest, close enough that the man can feel the words rumbling against his spine. Slug is still staring at his reflection. His eyes flick to White Hat’s one gentle blue orb paired with a gauze patch that Slug finished securing moments ago. 

  
“I—” Slug stumbles over his words, but if there is one thing White Hat drags out of him more often than not, it’s the truth, “I never thought I would do this again. I know it’s not _wrong_ but—”

  
White Hat softens, pulls Slug’s face away from the mirror so they can stand face to face.

  
“No it’s…” Slug sighs, eyes dropping to White Hat’s own beautifully laced tie. Thinking not for the first time what an elegant bastard the Elder Being is, “It’s just… we—Miranda and I—had so few years together and I—”

  
White Hat can feel whatever it is dancing inside the golden soul, placing a hand over Slug’s that are anxiously tracing the pattern of knots at White Hat’s neck. “You won’t lose me. You can’t.”

  
Slug gulps, “Theoretically but—”

  
“Would you like to hear my vows?” 

  
“What?” Slug startles looking up to see White Hat’s very serious face. The face he gets when he’s ready to save the world—Slug knows that face well. It being directed at him for pre-wedding jitters is strange to experience. It’s only a ceremony. Slug would not back down but he’s not sure such a face is worth expending over his silly worries, so instead he tries to tease again, “That might really be bad luck then…”

  
“Well, how about this part,” White Hat says, takes his fingers and kisses the broken-burned-healed tips of them, “For as long as time allows… I will be yours, by your side, protecting you. I will not leave you, perhaps, even when the time comes that I must. You and I will be bound through this world into whatever is next—whether you like it or not, my Dearest Doctor.”

  
Slug remembers laughing with a tickling-prickling sensation at the edges of his eyes. 

  
And he wakes with the faintest tingling of another kiss against his ring ringer.

  
His chest is heavy and the world is bleary. No light is in the room with him, because he has instead, built a tank to sleep in. He is suspended in cold water with fresh oxygen pumping into the chambers. This helps heal his skin and lungs faster. He’s crying. That can not be good for the dilution in his tank. He presses a button that releases the top with a slight pop and hiss of air pressure. The lid is heavy, and so opens slowly, but he has not installed a clock in the chamber as of yet. It should automatically open at 7 in the morning.

  
He does not want to go back to sleep and dream of a life not his. 

  
Slug wraps his arms around himself, knees curling to his chest automatically as he sits up. His abused skin cannot even prickle. The sensations and nerves are more dead than this other life. He is uncertain if he can feel anything at all. Perhaps these sensations are things his soul—which perhaps does not even belong to him now—accidentally manifests like, phantom pains, just for him.

  
It’s unfair to steal someone else’s happy memories when you have done nothing to earn them.

  
“When have I ever been a fair person?” Slug asks himself, aloud if only to hear something other than the memories rattling around in his head. He is wiping away tears. 

  
Somewhere inside his soul, there is an answer. He can practically hear it. But he decides not to listen.

  
…

  
White Hat is getting use to routine… which is to say, he was unaware how he merely floated from day to day, waiting for something to happen. It feels more proactive to know he raises when Dr. Slug does, joins him for a meal, lets the man dictate their daily actions (transactions), pauses for a lunch with the Doctor, finalizes his working day, and then aids his new employee with dinner. Oftentimes they will sit at the counter and White Hat brings up the things that have confused him.

  
Dr. Slug is surprisingly patient… if a little rude.

  
“Sparrow Heart is requesting I leave the Manor, though!” White Hat argues.

  
Slug is carefully chewing on something, pointing at White Hat with a utensil, “It’s not a bad request, White.”

  
“The Manor needs me to protect it—”

  
“Ah, no,” Slug reminds him, “The world needs your protection.”

  
White Hat sighs, nodding.

  
“Going to their terf shows you are on their side,” Slug explained, finishing his food.

  
“But I am on their side no matter my location!”

  
“But they don’t know that!” Slug said exasperated, “And if this little accommodation is enough to satisfy them, we do that.”

  
“We?” White Hat parroted.

  
Slug was standing to put away his plate, reaching for White Hat’s as well. He did not answer immediately, but finally settled with, “I assumed I would… go with.”

  
White Hat stared at the bandaged hands before lifting his gaze to the incredibly ruined face of his human employee, “I did not think Australia would be suitable for your injuries.”

  
“We would be—” the Doctor trips over his words briefly, but finds them again, voice strained, “If I am with you—I would be fine—your healing powers work outside the Manor.”

  
“I have been living so long in the Manor, it contains a field of… well, the same principle you would call radiation,” White Hat tried to explain, “Even in my absence, your health will continue to improve. Perhaps not as fast as in my presence, but overall, you will still—”

  
“You didn’t tell them about me,” he suddenly interrupts.

  
White Hat pauses. Slug has taken the plates to the sink now. He has yet to clean them. He is just holding a pair of yellow gloves. He does not put them on at all, his fingers wringing the rubber as he waits for an answer.

  
“Do I need to…?”

  
Slug’s hands stop their wringing, but his words are now sounding as if they are twisting themselves out of his throat, “Well… when you put it like that…”

  
White Hat watches him slip on the gloves, fingers shaking. The Elder Being stands and moves behind him. He places a palm on top of the doctor’s forearm. He means to send out a wave of healing, but Slug jerks away.

  
“Oh! Sorry! I was too silent again—”

  
“I’m _fine,”_ Slug snaps, and White Hat nods, hands held up. The man sighs, “Look it’s—it’s your business and whatever but—either you need me or you don’t. So. Fuck off to the Outback or drag my ass along but—” Slug runs a hand over his burned, bald head wrapped in gauze, “Don’t treat me like I only exist for you. It’s… not fair to me.”

  
White Hat nods, “You are right. Yes… I am sorry. I did not mean to imply—”

  
“Oh, shut up—” Dr. Slug said, voice losing its menace. The man looks like he scolded himself rather than White Hat, “It’s not like I don’t understand. I am aware that I am…” he gulps as he continues, vaguely waving a hand around himself, “Not what you might _want._ I was a Villain; I am burnt and bitter and… eating up your powers I guess… but I am, apparently, the thing you need to understand helping out humanity so!”

  
White Hat nearly jumps as Slug claps his hands together and the Elder Being can feel the pain in such an action. The harsh smack of damaged skin echoing across White Hat’s extra-sensory perceptions. 

  
“Help me out by doing the dishes. I think I need to go to bed early…”

  
White Hat takes the gloves from Slug, who just slinks away with this indecipherable look on his face. He watches the man leave for a moment. Then he looks at the dirty plates. He could just wave a hand and be done with it… but he takes the time to scrub, pondering the good doctor’s words. 

  
He wonders why the pain lingers, even with Slug moving farther and farther from his reach.

  
…

  
The following days are toiling. Slug hates it, but the memories are useful. He begins searching for people:

  
Miss Hanna—MIA.

  
The Golden Child, Tommen—Deceased. Went down in some blaze of glory only a few years ago.

  
Star Princess—No official record of her on Earth. A brief mention of her on a slip of paper in the 1980’s that White Hat jotted down as a note. Near indecipherable as it was partially written in (and this is only Slug’s educated guess) an Alien language. 

  
PysKid and Co.—No such company exists, but after some searching, modern urban legends in Japan have reported a strange kid living in a monastery that can see stuff you don’t want him to see.

  
Heavy Hitter—Incarcerated, 20 to Life, No probation. Max Security.

  
Slug puts his head in his hands and does not even know what to do next. The world is too bleak and he is too tired…

  
But, he sends a memo to someone, on White Hat’s behalf, asking for pardon for a friend. The next thing he does is circle a few locations in Japan and emails his boss the potential locations to scout. Slug is more or less finished for the day, but cannot seem to tear himself away from his desk. He is sitting in his chair, back bent, and feeling… well, he isn’t sure what feeling it is.

  
He does not know what other person could possibly feel what he feels. 

  
There is no name for this emotion.

  
Except there must be. 

  
There _must._

  
His head is in his hands again, and he can feel that prickling sensation at the corners of his eyes. He goes to reach up under a mask that he has not made. His face, while not naked, is not masked. Slug is bandaged, wrapped tighter than a hangman’s noose. It almost feels as if he cannot breathe through the layers and layers of gauze.

  
He rips himself free, damaged palms running over the mass of scar tissue and grafts to hang his head low, bowed against a gleaming worktable. Sparkling and sanitary, it reflects a pale image of him. 

  
The image is more disgusting than it is haunting. 

  
His face is ugly—head bald—red and pallid—shiny and dull—shaped and reshaped in such a way it is as if someone had sculpted him out of left-over clay or putty. He does not look like the man who was burned… he could never look like that again—but even so—he does not look like his hallowed memories dancing in his skull either. He looked human, if hurt. Now, he looked grotesque. An undead thing that should never have been revived. A revenant in all but actions. He did not burn for vengeance—there was nothing to be made right anymore—

  
“Why did he do this to me…?” Slug whispers, not knowing if he is talking about the Anti-hero in his previous life, or the one he was to call love, “I can’t _do_ this…!”

  
Except that Slug lifts his weary head from the table, wipes his face, cannot feel the sting of the salt, though he knows he should… and begins another search for a familiar face that he cannot find.

  
…

  
White Hat has not agreed to meet Sky Fox or Sparrow Heart outside of his Manor yet. Something worries him. 

  
He sits at a table, waiting.

  
White Hat was diligent today. He got his work done—whatever Dr. Slug suggested he do, he did without question. Well, no, he had questions. Mostly follow-ups or making sure he understood whatever task the man set before him… but, it went almost unspoken that White Hat would not do anything unapproved by the doctor.

  
The doctor has not come upstairs this day… and it seems about the time he should be making food for dinner. White Hat has come to see dinner time as a welcome reprieve from interacting with Heroes who question why only now he seeks to help. He fears explanations may signal weakness and all the Elder Being wishes to do is provide a strong figure for those around him to lean on. The years have slowly shown him his silence and unwillingness to interfere with human affairs is helping no one. Good is—no was—rapidly being overrun with cruelty in his incompetence. 

  
White Hat is probably not too late. He can still help. 

  
It gets later, and darker, and still… Doctor Slug has not come to him.

  
White Hat stands, walking out of the kitchen, and toward the lab.

  
He sees now why Doctor Slug had not come into the kitchen. The human is breathing deep and slow, upper body resting along his work bench. There are notes scattered around him, tests, timers, all sorts of things displayed along a wall, and a computer humming low in the background. Doctor Slug’s face is without a protective layer of bandages. 

  
White Hat is surprised by the swell of excitement that makes his steps bounce silent and quick. He had not had much time to see the extent of the man’s injuries. White Hat makes sure to not touch anything on the table, instead bending lower to inspect his human employee. 

  
Slug is, without a doubt, interesting to look at. 

  
His face is awfully hurt… a patchwork of pain and scars. White Hat only ever gets to see his eyes, and sometimes, his mouth, unobscured… Both seem nice. Doctor Slug is nice. 

  
Well, nice to look at. Sometimes Slug says rude words or shouts at him. Though, White Hat finds this is because Slug has many feelings about things, and the doctor is undeniably a good person. His soul glows and glows and glows… It’s a lot like looking into a sunset. It’s irresistibly warm and bright and just a little out of reach.

  
White Hat does not reach for his soul. He barely reaches for Slug’s injured face. 

  
Strangely, there is no discomfort radiating out of him in sleep. Doctor Slug is most at peace in sleep. He is quiet, and the golden temptation of his soul swirls inside his body, like a bellow blows into a fire, and White Hat has to look away for a second. 

  
He wants to keep looking, but he just _can’t._

  
There is something about watching the soul dance inside a human that is… it causes White Hat both hunger and attrition. 

  
The soul does not belong to White Hat—that much is clear. He was made without one… he feels the space where it ought to reside like a cold, unwelcoming vacuum. What has this White Hat done to deserve such a precious thing?

  
Nothing.

  
Though, perhaps he could start. 

  
White Hat stands, carefully maneuvering the sleeping man from his seat. The human does not stir. His breath does not hitch, and White Hat finds the sleeping chamber secured in a dim corner of the lab, with little more than a curtain that hides it from view. He had only watched the doctor descend into the chamber once, but that was all he needed to know in order to operate the machine.

  
He strips the man of his clothes, uncaring of where his hands are placed. White Hat is perhaps a little too fiercely pumping out his healing radiation—loathe as he was to give it a scientific term, but it eased the doctor’s mind. He makes sure Slug is settled and comfortable… but hesitates closing the lid. 

  
“Good night… Slug,” White Hat manages to murmur, testing in the informal use of the man’s name, “Have pleasant dreams.”

  
Slug hummed some type of response in his slumber. White Hat finds the sound pulls at the corners of his mouth. White Hat closes the lid, gentle as he can, testing his strength, his resolve. There’s a small screen that turns on, nightvision colored, atop the lid. It shows Slug is still asleep inside… he watches a few moments longer. It will occur to him later that it was a strange thing for the doctor to install in his machine, still glad for it, but confused as to the purpose. As if the doctor does not mind if White Hat could be seized by the urge to check on the human sleeping inside.

  
White Hat finds himself often in the lab at night, just to make sure the human is still comfortable.

  
…

  
“Stop watching me,” Slug grumbles into a pillow.

  
White Hat shifts in the bed, folding Slug into soft covers and downy blankets, “Stop being so beautiful!”

  
It makes Slug laugh, and he hides his face under the pillow where the sheet is cooler. The sheets are silk, soothing his skin. White Hat is trying to find him in their mess of a bed. It does not take long, but longer than it should given how Slug is also pushing the Elder Being away. White Hat eventually just plays dirty and starts throwing pillows around before finding the good doctor.

  
“Deny it all you want—”

  
“Did I deny anything?” Slug finally asks, turning over onto his back and staring up at the looming white figure.

  
White Hat leans down, hands settling beside either side of Slug’s head, “You normally do.”

  
“Well, maybe I am too tired to hate myself this morning,” Slug is being cheeky, watching White Hat puff his cheeks out in irritation. He sighs and leans down to press a kiss onto the man’s forehead. Slug closes his eyes to relish it. 

  
“I don’t want you to hate yourself,” White Hat murmurs.

  
Slug opens his eyes to see White Hat’s face overcome with emotion, “I know…”

  
“There’s no reason to.”

  
“I—” Slug goes to say he knows… but, stops short. His past as a Villain does not exactly haunt him… but it does disgust him. “I am trying. It’s a hard habit to break.”

  
“I am trying to help, too.”

  
“You’re overcorrecting is what you are doing,” Slug says, but there is no malice in the words. It is just a fact. 

  
White Hat shakes his head, “I don’t think so.”

  
“No?”

  
“Hmmm,” White Hat hums, dipping down to press another kiss wherever he can reach, “No.”

  
“You are attempting to distract me—”

  
“No,” White Hat argues some more. He does that more and more often with Slug’s soul residing inside him. Slug wonders if he is more combatant now because Slug was—is?—argumentative by nature. _“You_ are distracting _me!”_

  
“What?” Slug is laughing again, pushing against White Hat’s hands, trying to sit up, “How in the world am I distracting you? I was _sleeping_ moments ago!”

  
“And doing so _beautifully!”_

  
Slug does manage to sit, wrangling the Elder Being only because they were entangled in blankets, “You are so fucking dumb—!” laughter in between loud accusations and more distracting kisses, “No, seriously! You cheesy motherfucker I cannot believe—”

  
Dr. Slug gasps awake as his opening of his lid startles him. He does not sit up. 

  
He lies suspended in water, peace and warmth and laughter all fading from him.

  
It’s 7 AM.

  
White Hat is leaving in a few hours to see Sparrow Heart. 

  
He will not bring Slug.

  
It’s just as well. 

  
Slug doesn’t exactly have a face for the public…

  
He doesn’t even have a face for White Hat in this reality. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always--questions, comments, queries, and the like are always welcome!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and take care of yourselves out there!
> 
> <3


	6. Chapter Five: We'll Start Mending Bridges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this is super un-beta'd and I just needed to put it up because so much to do. 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS
> 
> vagueness! implied drug use! angst! injuries! 
> 
> Please enjoy!

Chapter Five: We’ll Start Mending Bridges

  
Slug was rolling his eyes, but, at least White Hat was no longer whining. The Elder Being merely stood beside the taxi and nervously danced his fingers over the brim of his top hat instead. “Plane travel is so long though! And I have never done so before! I may get confused!”

  
“Listen, there will be all kinds of personnel there,” Slug repeated for the hundredth time, “If you do get confused politely ask for directions. As many times as you need.”

  
“What if I get on the wrong plane?”

  
“You won’t,” Slug assured him, handing over an unsealed envelope, “That is what these tickets are for. You take them to a desk and someone will calmly direct you the right place to go.”

  
White Hat gingerly took the envelope and peered inside, “I am regretting not asking you to come.”

  
“It’s probably better this way, anyways,” the doctor said.

  
“It was foolish of me to… I do not know—to not speak of you,” White Hat said, voice warbling a little.

  
“Well, yes,” Slug plainly said before crossing his arms, and nodding over to the taxi driver sitting bored at the wheel, “Dumb move on your part—but it’ll be good to get you socializing with humans that aren’t me.”

  
White Hat’s non-existent nose seemed to wrinkle at the idea.

  
Slug was already opening the door to the cab and lightly glowering at the Elder Being, “No! None of that look. I am perfectly serious—”

  
“Is it too late to buy you a ticket as well, Doctor?”

  
“Yes,” Slug lied, almost gleefully as White Hat’s face fell, “I can’t hold your hand through every interaction with another not-me person—” the doctor was already pushing White Hat to sit down in the suspiciously sticky leather seat, “You want to help humanity? Spend some time with other people—people who aren’t…” Slug started to loose the ability to describe this weird situation with his new boss, “Just. Learn from the experience.”

  
White Hat sighed, nodding, “I suppose you are right.”

  
“I am always right,” Slug waved off, closing the cab door on White Hat’s disappointed face, “Never argue me.”

  
It was White Hat’s turn to try eye-rolling. Slug was almost impressed as the cab drove away.

  
…

  
Slug was alone in the Manor for hours, cleaning, cultivating, cooking. He blasted music through his new phone, looking for bands that simply didn’t exist in this reality. It was sad, having an earworm that could never be scratched, and eventually just found a radio station via a nifty little app and tried to work.

  
White Hat was not wrong before—the Manor seemed filled with power and magic and something otherworldly. It helped keep Slug calm and his body did not ache so much as it moved slower than he would like. He stopped paying attention to time until his phone died. He left his workstation to plug it in… only to find that he could not find his charger cord. Wracking his brain, he realized it was probably still in the box the phone came in…

  
Which he realized, he had not seen in a while. 

  
“The recycling,” Slug groaned allowed. 

  
Recycling was one of White Hat’s new instilled chores around the Manor. He must have seen the cardboard box and tossed it without checking inside. 

  
“Dang it…” 

  
Slug left his phone, grabbed his wallet and a set of keys, and walked out of the Manor. There was a 24-hr convenience store which should have generic charging cords… if memory served… and as he walked along in the dead of night, Slug realized… he had yet to really leave the Manor since he arrived who knows how long ago. He stopped at a corner, glancing across the street to see a shelter for women, children, and the homeless. The lights inside were off. The name of the building painted and repainted after years of switching hands from the church to other non-profits.

  
Slug felt sick looking at it. 

  
In fact, Slug felt sick in general. 

  
The further he walked, the more his steps seemed to take the breath from him. His hands were shaking, and his vision grew blurrier and blurrier. All of his skin screamed at him and he found he had to remind himself where he was. He was leaning against a fence and panting, hands pressing into cold metal. 

  
“Hey,” a voice said, and it sounded unsure, but familiar, “You don’t look too good.”

  
Slug shook his head, mouth feeling gummy, “Can’t… make it…”

  
“Um…!” the voice answered, and Slug rocked on his heels, pulling his body back the way it came.

  
It was unsurprising, but the closer he grew to the Manor the better he was able to get his body back under his control. Slug turned his head, squinting his eyes in the dark—wondering if the lamplight of the street was so dim, or if his eyesight was simply more damaged than he realized without White Hat’s mitigating effects of healing.

  
“Do you—fuck—” the voice kind of grew closer and a vague shape was appearing out of the shadows, “Do you need me to call like, an ambulance or something?”

  
Slug shook his bandaged head in response, “I need to get ho—”

  
His voice was croaky and he choked on the word, ‘home.’ Was the Manor really his home…? Or was he now shackled to it, if he simply didn’t want to die from the trauma of the fire? Talk about taking away much of a choice. He shook his head of the thought.

  
“I am fine,” he managed, “I just…” he found it hard to breathe between words, and rested against some pole—it could be anything from a stop sign to a lamppost, he had no idea, his sight and bodily senses were so askew—“I didn’t realize… how bad off… I am.”

  
The voice and image he was talking to made kind of an irritated noise, “Shit—Look I can—”

  
“I really am… fine…” Slug tried to wave off, limping back toward the Manor.

  
“Dude! C’mon!” the voice became clearer and clearer as Slug got to the Manor, but he didn’t want to look at this person, embarrassment and humiliation rising up inside his chest, prickling at his damaged eyes. “You look like you—Fuck, seriously, man!”

  
“I am fine! I just—” Slug could see the Manor and it’s gates now, across the street, but he stopped at the intersection. There were no cars. No signs of other people being up and about. He was shocked for a second to see a young woman step out into the street in front of him, hands outstretched to brace him in case he fell.

  
“You’re hurt, aren’t you?” she demanded.

  
Slug found himself floored at the image before him. 

  
She had to be 20, at least. Her hair reached just past her shoulders, faded electric blue, but a stripe of bleached roots had turned a burnt-out orange at her scalp. Her eyes were a little hardened, and mouth set stern. She seemed thinner than she should be, her clothes a little worse for wear. Shoes beat up, jeans ripped, with a baggy hoodie fixed in places with what looked like rainbows and a skeletal unicorn patch.

  
“Clem…?”

  
…

  
“What do I do, Sluggy?” Clem asked, sitting at the edge of her bed, rubbing the back of her neck as her head hung between her legs, “What can I do?”

  
Slug doesn’t know if he had ever felt so devastated before. Estella is asleep in his arms, 0.5.0. is sedated, bandages over his now stump of an arm. He could fix that—but that’s all he could do. White Hat is crossing the room, sitting beside their ward, rubbing her back as she dissolves into sobs. Slug presses a gentle hand over the now-orphaned girl’s ear that’s not pressed to his chest. 

  
“It’s alright, my darling,” White Hat tries to comfort. Clementia stands suddenly turning to him and flinging out her arms.

  
“It’s my fault!” she nearly screams, but her voice breaks, “Because of me! Me!”

  
“No,” Slug manages to say, voice croaking. Clem’s head hangs again in response.

  
She won’t look at him, he knows, she can’t bare it with the grief and guilt of the last 24 hours so raw.

  
“Clementine—”

  
“Don’t call me that,” she hisses.

  
White Hat presses his hand to the golden glow in his chest, can feel the visceral reaction, and Slug tries to remain calm. He has a sleeping child in his arms. 

  
“Never again. I never want to hear that from either of you. It’s Clementia. That’s—” her voice breaks and she hides the tears streaming from her eyes with the heels of her palms, “I can’t anymore. I can’t pretend like—I can’t hear that from you two. Please. That’s my only name now.”

  
White Hat stands and enfolds Clementia into his chest where she cries even harder. 

  
“Alright, okay…” he murmurs into the top of her head. He looks over at Slug, who is also cradling Estella carefully, “Whatever you need. We’ll be here.”

  
She pushes away from White Hat’s chest, “I don’t need anything! It’s Estella who—”

  
“You lost many friends today,” White Hat said, quiet, sounding just as upset, “Estella will survive. We will watch out for her… but right now, we are more worried about you.”

  
Slug begins rocking Estella lightly, anxious, as Clementine glances between them. Eventually her gaze lands on Cero.

  
“I was…” she starts, but her mouth closes after a minute. Her head hangs again in shame, “I don’t think I was ever in any danger, White Hat. I wasn’t going to be hurt. Dementia could never—for all her talk… she… I was let go.”

  
White Hat looked over at Slug. Slug closed his eyes and brushed hair away from Estella’s little face, nodding. 

  
“She killed them… and I can’t help but think… it’s because they were my friends.”

  
“Clementia—No,” White Hat goes to argue. 

  
Slug sighs, “She might be right...” 

  
White Hat looks horrified, bringing Clementia in closer as if to protect her from the knowledge itself. 

  
“I tried to tell you, White,” the doctor whispers, ashamed, “That’s the only way a Villain knows how to show their devotion…”

  
…

  
Slug has wobbled, and this girl who should be Clem, has caught his arm. “Dude, you are not okay!”

  
With a deep breath, Slug finds himself being led across the street as distant, vague sounds of cars can be heard. He’s trying to catch his mind up with the image before him—and cannot. He has to remind himself of the year, has to remember that the people who existed somewhere else, do not exist here for him… The touch of what should be his adopted daughter is casual, helpful, and he doesn’t feel it so much as he is aware that there is pressure on his bicep. A bicep that has little definition than he would like, skin charred and grafted and mottled. Slug is leaning against white gates on instinct more than he is on a fully conscience decision. The girl who must be Clem, but cannot be, has briefly hesitated.

  
“It’s fine…” Slug quietly tells her, “I live here… I—” He doesn’t know how to explain himself. He just pushes at the gate, and she barely acknowledges his words, helping him up the long pathway of the drive. “I am White Hat’s new doctor.”

  
“White Hat needs a doctor?” the girl questions, almost as if she were bored, but her fingers flinch at the mention of the Elder Being.

  
“Apparently he needs a lot of things,” Slug says, having a much easier time talking now that they are coming to the threshold of the Manor.

  
The silence is awkward for a brief moment as they stand before the double doors. Slug wonders for a second why that is, and then remembers his keys. He rummages in his pockets, slower and slightly frustrated. He feels like his breath had been knocked from him, and its taking a second too long to recover. Still, he can breathe, and much better yet, he can move without pain. He is unlocking the door.

  
“Thank you,” he manages to look over at this girl. She is staring at him and Slug realizes, not for the first time, the subtle heterochromia of her irises. A brown-hazel and a green-hazel. It’s near impossible to notice, but under the right light, with enough attention and more so, understanding of genetics, Slug picks up on it every time. This girl—or, young woman he should realize—is most definitely Clem. “I… I can make you something to eat, if you’d like?”

  
There is a definite unease on her face, and for a split second, he is sure she will decline. But, her thin hand on his arm gives a gentle squeeze, “Yeah, alright. I’m always down to chow.”

  
He directs her kitchen-ward, and each step into the Manor is a little stronger. By the time they are in the actual clean, tiled kitchen, Slug has already floated to a pantry and has pulled out pasta and bottles of sauce. The electric kettle is filled and boiling water while Slug heats up the contact countertop. No open flames, not yet. The young woman is leaning against the fridge not watching him so much as she watches the preparation of what is properly her first meal in a week. She is not exactly radiating waves of calm, but she doesn’t seem overly worried for Slug’s health anymore either.

  
“I nearly died in a fire—” Slug says these words, not blurting them, just casually dropping the sentence like a bomb into the air of silence between, “I was in a coma for a decade or two. White Hat woke me up. He needed someone to help him.”

  
“That explains the bandages I guess,” the girl says, her eyes flicking to his face before back to observe the way Slug is carefully adding oil and salt to the pot of water. He’s slowly adding in his specially made potato gnocchi. He goes into his veggie cupboard and starts pulling out mushrooms and peppers of varying colors.

  
“White Hat has extraordinary healing powers—” Slug turns and then realizes something, “Are you allergic to anything?”

  
The girl shakes her head, eying the knife in his hand. Slug just nods in return and begins to chop his sauce mix-ins carefully. He could not move quickly anyways, but the point is to let her know he is not a threat.

  
“As you can see, I am still recovering,” Slug continues his original thought, “If I leave White Hat’s side, or this Manor I suppose, I will probably succumb to the damage done to my body.”

  
“You’ll fall back into your coma?” 

  
Dr. Slug pauses, setting down his knife. He turns to look at who should have been his ward in another life. “I don’t know. I suppose I might…”

  
“Bummer,” she mumbles, looking away from him. 

  
Slug can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. She looks as surprised as he feels. He presses the back of his hand near his mouth, as if that could muffle the sound. It’s just… Clem always had a way of summarizing situations that got a rise out of him. It was always a good one though. He had not realized until that moment that he missed it. He missed her. Slug didn’t even know her. Not this cautious, disinterested, starving youth leaning in a sterile kitchen. 

  
But… she came to his rescue. 

  
She saw someone in pain and spoke to them. 

  
Helped someone, in the dead of night, and walked them home.

  
“Has anyone ever told you,” Slug starts with a smile, “You’re a smart kid.”

  
She tsks, her facing flashing embarrassed for a second, finally turning away from the food and moves a few steps closer to help Slug take the heavy pot of pasta off the stove and toward the sink to drain, “I’ve been called a lot of things, but nah, not overly smart.”

  
“Well, you are,” Slug insists. He is heating up the sauce now and then points toward a cabinet, “Would you mind setting the table?”

  
“Sure thing, doc.”

  
The silence they eat in is much more comfortable.

  
…

  
“I’m tired!” a child groans.

  
“You’re not allowed to be tired!” an adult admonishes. 

  
The scene plays on and Clem has her little nose wrinkled. Slug is similarly affronted, arms and legs crossed as they watch from the stadium’s benches. They are seated in an arena for some Hero-something-or-other, which Slug finds such events a waste of time. More importantly, as White Hat is overseeing this particular competition, Slug and Clem are now seated between more interesting things to do, observing an irritating man train his—not side-kick, because that’s outlawed now—but his protégé.

  
“Who is that?” Clem, no older than the twelve-year-old in the ring in front of them, asks in not quite a stage whisper. 

  
“He’s called Sky Fox,” Slug answers, not bothering to whisper, “He only comes around for the competitions portion of the season.”

  
The man, cloaked in black, barely twists to see Slug lounging now, as if bored.

  
“That’s the only time we’ll see him in public,” Slug continues, making eye-contact with the man, “He likes to shame his fellow Heroes.”

  
“Sluggy…” Clem whimpers, grabbing his coat sleeve as Sky Fox glares at the ex-Villain.

  
White Hat is walking into the ring, arm full of papers he will mostly likely make Slug check over and order properly, when he surveys the mounting tension. He stops just behind the unnamed young boy, whose panting on his knees, struggling to stand. “Is there a problem, Dr. Slug?”

  
“No,” Sky Fox gives his monosyllabic answer and jerks his head at his ward, who barely stands and both the Heroes trudge off elsewhere. White Hat briefly watches them go, before looking back to Slug, who is standing, Clem’s hand in his.

  
White Hat waits patiently as the two cross over to him, and as expected, Slug is being handed documents. It’s White Hat’s turn to take Clementia’s hand in his own talons and she tugs impatiently at the Elder Being. “He was being really mean to his kid!”

  
“Ah,” White Hat said, knowingly. Slug made an annoyed hum in response at him. It only made White Hat smile before he looks down at Clem and gives her a nod, “We still should be careful how we speak to people, though.”

  
“I’m careful!” Clem insists, loudly. 

  
Slug is flipping through the papers, already irritated at inordinate amount of Heroes participating in this tomfoolery of a competition. Jesu, his fucking missed Villain conventions. Buy bad shit, sell bad shit, maybe beat up an enemy, get some new contacts… or black mail. Whatever. It was easier than this rigorously planned competition crap. Fair was hard to coordinate when there were so many powered and non-powered Heroes to consider.

  
“Why are we doing this again?” 

  
“Well between myself, the Golden Group, and Sky Fox—” White Hat began and Dr. Slug groaned as if he was the one being pounded into the dirt at the mere mention of Sky Fox.

  
“We never see that fucking dickwad and now we have to put up with his fuckery of suggestions just so his ward can beat up some unknowns?” Slug ranted, and as he does so, White Hat is already covering Clem’s vulnerable little ears from the deluge of filth the doctor is so ready to hurl at the dark Hero.

  
“Doctor, please,” White Hat trying to stage whisper is like a waterfall trying not to splash any would-be nature-watchers, “His outreach is indispensable.”

  
“To him,” Slug argued, jerking his chin as he was unable to point with so much paperwork to hold, “And ‘outreach’ is a little bit of an understatement. He has assets.”

  
White Hat was momentarily distracted as Clementia started trying to wiggle her way out of his pale hands to listen to their conversation. As she grew older, she was less and less inclined to be excluded in her adoptive parents’ conversations—whether they were friendly-worded or not. “Assets makes it seem like—like some kind of those spy movies we do not let Clementia watch alone.”

  
“I know what I said, White,” Slug responded, calming as Clem successfully untangled herself from the Elder Being’s hands.

  
“He is fighting for Good,” White Hat said, as if that was the end of the discussion, “And I am sure he means to use his resources to the best of his abilities.”

  
“Yeah. Again! To his abilities,” Slug muttered. 

  
“Dr. Slug—”

  
“All I am saying is people who can’t give up control—like Sky Fox—They don’t always make the best holistic decisions,” Slug shot back, trying to make it seem like the matter was closed as Clem grew impatient and, worse, curious about the conversation.

  
White Hat raised a non-existent brow, “I see… So, you speak from experience, then?”

  
“Did you just imply—” Slug starts, almost impressed at the subtle jab, before he remembers he really ought to be mad at the elegant bastard, “You know what? Me and Clem are gonna go get ice cream, and you aren’t invited. You’ll have to go back to the hotel and do the paperwork on your own!”

  
“Huh? But it’s so much—”

  
“No, no! You are correct! I should really give up control now and then!”

  
Slug drops the stack of papers, takes Clem’s hand, and they merrily rush off as White Hat dashes about to collect them, shouting, “Wait—Dr. Slug! I—I did not mean it! Slug!”

  
…

  
“So… You’re named after a bug?” the not-Clem girl asks.

  
“Uh, no, not—” Slug scratches at his bandages as the insecurity in him rises, “Not exactly. It’s just a moniker that stuck. It’s not my real name. I don’t technically have… uh… well.”

  
The girl snorts, finishing her forth plate of food with a clatter of her fork, “Don’t sweat it, doc. I don’t got much of a name either.”

  
“Oh… that’s—that’s right. I haven’t asked you your name…” Slug realizes. In his head he just kept calling her Not-Clem. He kept thinking of her as his little girl every now and again as well. His soul felt heavy and his body felt slow… but his mind still managed to be rocket fast. Or maybe he just thought it did.

  
“Yeah, not a lot of people do,” she said, reaching for her glass of milk. She hadn’t asked for one either, Slug had just given it to her. She always had milk with her pasta. It helped her stomach later, she claimed, but Slug could not have known that—or perhaps should not have known that. Either way, the young woman simply accepted it. Maybe it was not something this Clem ever had to worry about, her stomach upset from so much rich food. She wasn’t picky or begging, just eating as much as she could, eying the left-overs.

  
“I’m sorry,” Slug says. It’s not really about her name, it’s about so much more.

  
The girl just shrugs, “Don’t worry about it. It happens.”

  
“It—It shouldn’t.”

  
The girl is quiet for a second, and Slug wonders if she understands him—

  
But she can’t. Slug is the only person to have lived two wildly different lives. To have seen and felt and heard and done and not done so much. He suddenly feels lightyears away from the girl sitting next to him. Worse yet… he can only imagine how alone she has been. His absence from White Hat—from the Manor—it affected more than White Hat. 

  
Fuck Slug for not realizing sooner.

  
“White Hat is gone from the Manor—” Slug chokes out suddenly, “And I am not great at… as much as I need to be. Not alone—” he stumbles, trying not to rush, but the words are just coming out of him as soon as he thinks them, “If you need some place to stay, or food, or money—you can stay here. I’ll hire you as my assistant.”

  
“What?” the girl asks, staring at him.

  
“You can start by calling a contractor,” Slug decides, “You can have a room next week. I make breakfast by 8 AM, but really, with my injuries, the day to day schedule varies for now—”

  
“Wait, hold up—” the girl says, throwing up a hand and staring down at her plate. 

  
Slug stops speaking instantly. He made a mistake, he must have.

  
“You don’t even… You don’t know me,” she says, voice low, in pain, not looking at Slug suddenly, as if she were the scarred monster, “You don’t know the things I’ve done—the things I am willing to do to—”

  
“All I know is that you were brave enough to help me,” Slug cuts off. She looks up at him to see him give her a little bit of a sheepish grin, “And kind enough to let me fix you a, lets be honest, sub-par meal.”

  
“Dude, quit it, this shit is legit,” she manages to shoot back.

  
Slug laughs again. She looks comforted for a moment. Then she hardens again.

  
“But I mean it… you don’t know me. I could rob you blind by the morning or something—I could fucking kill you right now, you’re so weak…” she says, trailing off. 

  
All Slug can do is shrug, “Yeah. That’s all true. But… well, there’s not much to take, and what’s the point of killing an old-addled ass like me?”

  
“I guess I could ransom you to White Hat…?”

  
“Hmm, White Hat doesn’t understand money,” Slug said, “You’d get more being on his payroll than trying to trick him.”

  
“Yeah?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow. 

  
Slug nods.

  
“Well…” the girl says, sitting back to stare at Dr. Slug, “Guess I don’t got much of a choice.”

  
“White Hat might argue you always have a choice…” Slug said softly, suddenly terrified.

  
The girl laughs this time, “That’s kind of a dumb philosophy, ain’t it?”

  
“Well, it has it’s charm…”

  
…

  
It’s a rare day. The summer sun is shining, and the wind is crisp. The world isn’t in danger. They left the city far behind. Slug rented a cabana at the beachside. Clementia is splashing in the sparkling waves with a monstrous purple bear diving in and out of the water, covered in kelp. It was her sweet sixteen and there was a cake on the way. White Hat is standing in the soft, cream colored sand, wearing some old-timey type bathing suit, with a wide-brimmed bleached straw hat with a blue ribbon. Slug is smiling behind his mask at the ridiculousness of the image.

  
It’s not the first time he realizes how much he loves White Hat. He’s probably recognized it before… but it is the first time he decides to simply keep his mouth shut. White Hat has looked over at him, curious, as if he could sense something shift inside the dear doctor.

  
“Can you swim?”

  
“Well enough,” Slug answers, quieter than usual.

  
“Clementia would probably appreciate you being out in the water with her? Yes?” White Hat asks again.

  
Slug shifts on his feet nervously, toes digging into the cooler recesses of the sand, “I don’t… like seaweed.”

  
White Hat laughs, and it’s not mean-spirited at all, he’s just amused. Or more accurately, bemused by Slug’s sudden shyness. Slug is a little confused by it himself. He ends up crossing his arms defiantly.

  
“It’s nasty feeling, alright? It sticks to you and just—” Slug pretends to shudder and White Hat is grinning at him, so Slug turns away, “It’s fucking disgusting. I hate it.”

  
“I do believe you hate a great many things in the time I have come to know you,” White Hat says, “There is perhaps a shorter list of the things you love.”

  
Slug almost startles, looking back at the Elder Being. White Hat is simply staring at him, looking a little lost, a little impassive. Slug thinks its almost impossible for this creature to feel… well, to feel the depths of such a word as love.

  
His throat feels tight as he whispers, “Don’t be cruel… please… everything I ever loved before, I—”

  
White Hat’s genial temperament sobers. 

  
“You are correct. I am sorry…” the Elder Being glances over at Clem, still unaware and dunking her poor bear into the ocean with abandon. “I had not meant to—to remind you of what happened. You said you—you lived by the seaside. I remember. I should have—”

  
Slug can only sigh, cutting him off, “It’s alright, White Hat…”

  
“No, I was insensitive. I recognize that now,” White Hat continues, and he seems to be staring beyond Clementia, “The last thing I wish to do is harm you—harm anyone.”

  
“I know,” the doctor said, “And you haven’t—harmed me, that is. You… You are helping. We’ll find them—the person who did this to me—and then…”

  
White Hat looked less relieved than Slug would have liked in that moment, “Yes, Doctor Slug?”

  
Slug never answered. Clementia had run up that moment, holding a handful of sand dollars. She was excited and Slug listened facts about them, about things in general, while White Hat watched… one blue eye darting from naked, scarred hands to a hidden face. It would be years before Slug would know of White Hat’s fascination with his hands, his nimble, quick fingers, of how every atom of the Elder Being was drawn to healing and holding them between his own. How White Hat could have no idea of the name of the things he was feeling. 

  
How such a feeling could be so inaccurately described, so inaccurately only named, love.

  
…

  
Slug was pulling out a cot for the young girl—woman—she was at least 18. She wasn’t forthcoming about it, but Slug was unbothered. He knew. She seemed not in the least bit worried.

  
He was folding a blanket, hands shaking and unsteady. 

  
“Here,” the girl said, “If I am gonna be your assistant, I can make my own bed.”

  
Slug wanted to snark back, when have you ever made your bed without me telling you before? But the words dried in his throat when he realized… She was spreading out a white, almost hospital like sheet over the cot, a few ergonomic pillows piled on one end. 

  
“Will this be alright for you? It can get chilly, I think—” Slug was pressing a thumb into the palm of his hand, rubbing a naked ring finger, feeling almost a sense of vertigo of not having a wedding ring to turn. He had one for years and now—

  
“I will just borrow one of your lab coats I guess,” she said with a shrug. 

  
Slug nodded, “Smart. They are well insulated.”

  
She finished and turned back to him, leaning one hip on the cot. He was silent, waiting for her to speak. She seemed just as unsure of what to say. Slug decided that would not do.

  
“Thank you…” he said with a gulp, “I… Just, thank you. For accepting the job.”

  
“Hey, no problem,” she brushed off. Slug had to forcibly shove his hands into his coat pockets to stop his nervous fumbling. She seemed to notice.

  
“It isn’t just—just while White Hat’s gone either. You are welcome to stay permanently,” the doctor tried to put more authority, more assurance into his voice.

  
The girl rubbed the back of her neck, “I—Well, let’s get through, like, this probation period first or something. I don’t know how White Hat would feel having someone like me on his team…”

  
It hit Slug like a ton of bricks that this girl—who should have been, would have been Clementia Habberdash, the ward of White Hat—did not know who this burned, scarred doctor was before her.

  
“Cle—I—” he stuttered over his words for a second. Then with a sigh, rubbed his bald head covered in bandages, “You are so young, I guess you don’t know…”

  
“Huh?” 

  
“Darling, my injuries are from an assassination attempt. I was not a Hero. I worked for a crime syndicate in South America,” Slug explained. 

  
The girls eyes went wide for a moment. Her posture slackened and she pointed at him, slack jawed, “You?!”

  
“Yes,” Slug nodded, “I was quite ruthless.”

  
“But you made me pasta!”

  
“Bad guys needed to eat too,” Slug mumbled, crossing his arms self-consciously, “And cooking is therapeutic for me—”

  
The girl sat down on the cot, stunned.

  
“If it makes you feel better,” Slug said, “Technically I am not a Villain any longer…? I just… know how Villains operate.”

  
The girl hummed, “I guess that makes sense why White Hat would want you then—keep your enemies closer and all that…”

  
Slug stood uncomfortable before the girl.

  
“So… there is a chance… White Hat would—” she cut off her thought and looked up at Slug, “There’s something you should know before you hire me, though.”

  
Slug blinked, surprised by the girls sudden internal shift, “Yeah?”

  
“Yeah—” she cleared her throat, sticking out a hand. He could vaguely see track marks from her pushed up sleeve, “My name is Claire, for the paperwork.”

  
Slug took her hand with his own shaky grip. Her skin was warm and the grasp firm.

  
“But, I don’t particularly care for it. Bad memories. So you can just call me… Clarity.”

  
“Clarity, huh?” he asked. It was a far cry from Clementia… but, what could he expect? This woman before him wasn’t his Clem. This was a person who had to navigate the world without him, without the safety of White Hat Manor… and she decided she wanted Clarity. “Alright. I can call you that.”

  
She beamed.

  
TBC…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, any comments and questions are welcome and I will try to answer anything that doesn't quite seem to make sense. 
> 
> And yes, in case anyone is wondering, I don't recall ever talking about the color of Clem's eyes in my previous fic so... in I did, consider it retconned, baby! She got a slight heterochromia. And a new name. Birth name reveal! 
> 
> Thank you so, so much for reading, and I hoped you enjoyed. 
> 
> <3


	7. We'll Start By Trying Something New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the last chapter did not have any italics because I was too lazy to edit it properly. I haven't done heavy editting for this chapter either. I do not have a beta-reader or editter so... Very sorry everyone.
> 
> You know, it's been tough to sit down and write when the world is what it is...
> 
> That being said, thank you everyone who has patiently waited. 
> 
> Please enjoy

Chapter Six: We’ll Start By Trying Something New

White Hat did not _hate_ plane travel. In fact, plane travel turned out to be somewhat a nifty experience. Of course, going through security was weird and a little scary. He accidentally broke a machine. He was detained for a few minutes before he calmly explained that… well, he’s not human, just mostly cosmic radiation and goo masking as a humanoid. Sorta. Maybe. The point being White Hat is really _good_ at looking humanoid.

So, all in all, security let him board the plane with little fuss. The plane had a thing—a layover? That might have been what Dr. Slug told him it was called—and thus he had to disembark part way through his journey. That was also a little worrisome. However, he followed other passengers and took the time to ask directions from people in official looking blazers with radios. He found himself in what seemed like a little mall. White Hat had a small carry-on, and wheeled it behind him, looking around at things. Dr. Slug had given him a budget and requested a souvenir. White Hat walked to a counter—since the direction asking worked well, maybe the cashier would have a good idea about what to pick out as a little gift. The cashier was confused for a brief moment about why an employee would want something from an airport.

“I am going to Australia,” the Elder Being explained, “But I stopped here first. I would like to pick up a gift everywhere I stop. Just in case.”

The cashier had smiled and supplied White Hat with duty-free candy and bright red scarf with a small monarch butterfly stitched on the end. He was drawn to the vivid color and the beautiful pigments of the embroidery. “It’s part of our visitor line for the summer,” the cashier explained.

White Hat nodded, placing both gifts into his, more or less, empty carry-on. He went to his specific terminal and waited for a few hours, standing and looking at the large screens displaying gate numbers and flight departures like a sentinel. Then, White Hat was on his next plane and graciously ate the snacks provided, but gave his pudding cup to a small child staring at him from the seat in front of his own. The child smiled toothily, and being supplied with a snack, stopped staring afterwards. The parents beside him slept fitfully all the while.

White Hat did not bother with in-flight entertainment, instead watching the clouds and sky and ocean as the plane flew with very little problem into Canberra. Leaving the plane, and in fact, the airport, was almost too easy and White Hat worried he had missed a step somewhere. He did not though, and calmly existed, seeing a man leaning against a non-descript black SUV in the pick-up area.

The man was dashing in a classic tall, dark, and handsome respect. At least, White Hat believes that is the general description of the man—Sparrow Heart—who stood without mask, hands in his pockets of an airy bomber jacket, the bright red of the cloth standing out in the white-washed atmosphere. White Hat stopped before him, and the man nodded, opening his passenger door.

“Glad to see you here, Sir.”

“Sparrow Heart—”

“Ohhh,” the man quickly put a finger to his lips, “None of that in public, please.”

“I am about to get into your car, in broad daylight…” White Hat pointed out, doing so cautiously as he looked about the mostly empty area, “The public really has no idea who you are?”

“Nope,” the man said, “When I am out of the mask I am just Rich—Richmond Vincent, adopted son of Samson Vincent… Oh! But don’t call him Sam, though. He hates that. Also hates going by dad too, but _you_ don’t have to worry about that—”

White Hat was swept away by Rich—Sparrow Heart—and his barrage of information. Which was not bad. White Hat was there for information. It was just that Rich apparently had a wealth of personal stories he was spewing forth without thought. “Excuse me, but is this really necessary?”

Rich blinked, then turned to White Hat briefly, “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“White Hat, Sir, you have been on the sidelines for as long as Heroes have had a history…” Rich said, slow and measured, and White Hat briefly worried he had upset the young man, “And Sky Fox has… he has been battling the Villains of the world with—well—the ill-equipped. He’s—my pops has been getting on fine but… no, I—”

White Hat patiently waited, but the young man was slowing his car to a stop. He was looking up lost at the red light of a busy intersection. The Elder Being glanced away to take in the sights, and the young man let out a sigh.

“We don’t have a lot of friends left in this fight, Sir.”

“You have lost someone?”

“Lots of someones…” Rich muttered, then stretched out in a faux move of relaxation as the light turned green, and they continued their journey into the rich desert of the outback, “But we survived. Me and my dad—Samson and I, I mean…”

“I see,” White Hat said, voice softening as he stared out of the rapidly changing landscape. Away from people, into a wavering sunset instead, “That is Good, though, is it not?”

Sparrow Heart did not answer for a while, and White Hat wondered if perhaps he said the wrong thing. After a minute, the young man gave a half nod, navigating the road into darkness in a muscle memory that let the mind wander, “I don’t have any survivor’s guilt, if that’s what you are asking, but sometimes… It gets lonely. I can’t miss people who never wanted me but I… I am just trying to help Samson know that I am there. I’m trying to help him. That’s all I want to do…”

“Rich?” White Hat asked, realizing something important, “Sky Fox does not know I have come into his country, does he?”

“Hmm, seems I forgot to put it in his calendar,” was the cavalier response.

…

The thing about White Hat is… he is _boundless_. Actually, White Hat is not even a _he_ , per se. White Hat is an Elder Being—immortal, alien, and formless—gormless even, one can argue. White Hat is whatever he needs to be, which means, ultimately, he is nothing. However, he is nothing on the side of the Light and the Good and the Continuation of the Universe. That is his special roll in all universes, in all places, in all times—even those places without times and times without places. White Hat is confusing and, even more so, confused.

He means well, even if he does not mean to do anything.

White Hat does a lot of nothing on a Good day, and on a not-so-good day, nothing Good really happens.

White Hat is trying to remember a time when he felt like he had not had a day in which he did his absolute best to be the Best and the Good Guy. There is barely a handful—and he does not even have hands… technically speaking, of course. This corporeal form does have talons. They are holding the handle of his carry-on in a tight grip as he walks around the Sky Fox HQ. Rich—Sparrow Heart—calls it _home_.

Sky Fox and Sparrow Heart live in the heart of the desert, burrowed underground, and it makes White Hat—what’s the world, ah!— _claustrophobic_. Sky Fox has a satellite station around the world known as the Observance, but it is highly guarded and only the Elite are allowed to enter. Sky Fox communicates with whatever Heroes are stationed there, while running interference on the ground level.

Sky Fox is notoriously hard to gain trust with. Sparrow Heart has perhaps doomed this endeavor to build bridges with a very powerful Hero. White Hat needs all the power he can get to stop the encroaching imbalance with the Villainy of the world…

“Why would you lie to me, Rich?” White Hat asks as he stands before a large monitor where the young man is pointing at locators across the country.

Rich does not even bother to turn to him, “You need help. I am willing to help.”

“You _lied_ to your father.”

“It’s what sons do,” Rich replied, eyes forward.

“Is it, now?” White Hat asked, sharper than he meant to.

“It’s complicated—” the young man scoffed, finally glancing over his shoulder at the Elder Being, “I am sure you understand how family can be.”

White Hat’s eye narrowed as his monocle gleamed in the low light.

“You’re here and I’ll share our information with you,” he continued, turning back to the monitor.

“Your lie could jeopardize my objectives.”

Rich’s high-tech monitor must have been touch-sensitive, because he started tapping on the screen. Images zoomed past and his dark finger tapped at a blurry photo of a human from scanned polaroids. “How do you feel about lies by omission then?”

White Hat blinked at the photo, not quite understanding. Rich scoffed and pulled up text documents and hospital records.

“I know you recently gained a new employee. One with a _very_ shady past,” he said, voice low, “Strange you never mentioned that before you came here. I was not surprised at all you arrived by yourself. Keeping secrets from Sky Fox is dangerous.”

White Hat let go of his carry on—arms crossing his chest—staring down at the human before him.

“ _I_ have not lied to anyone,” White Hat’s tone was boarding on chilly, “I have never had an employee before. I did not know I should mention having a new one… but I do know of his past.”

White Hat took a moment to glance over the image and documents lighting up the screen. Dr. Slug was… very nice looking, before the burns, and his past was certainly decorated. He took in the crime scene photos that flashed and popped in the background. Had he not known of the Golden Soul resting inside the man’s chest, he might have concluded the man a total monster… but even monsters have the best of intentions. White Hat, of course, knew that all too well.

“You and your double certainly went shopping for a piece of work,” Sparrow Heart said, closing down the digital documents, “Was it his idea to contact us?”

White Hat was almost bereft for a moment. He should have brought Dr. Slug. He was feeling… attacked? Yes, he was feeling very attacked at the moment. The doctor had a quick wit and righteous temper. The man could probably beat back this youngster. “It was after much back and forth—but yes, he concluded my best move is to create a network of Heroes—Heroes who mostly like would be known by you and your father.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as suspicious?! A Villain is nearly _murdered_ —probably by an elemental Hero and you just blindly decide to listen to _his_ ideas on how to hunt down Heroes?!” Sparrow Heart was now shouting, spinning to the Elder Being. He looked ready to physically attack.

White Hat was becoming more and more unimpressed, “Is this why you agreed to help me?”

“Answer me, White Hat!” Sparrow Heart demanded, and suddenly, from under his red sleeves, when the lad flicked his wrists, two short staffs made of perhaps the strongest metal on earth were extended.

“I see…” White Hat sighed, he reached up and caught a quick strike made at his face. Humans could be fast, but White Hat was impossibly faster. There was no real way to land a blow on a creature existing in between time and space and reality. His atoms could be wherever and however he wanted them in the physical place. At just a space of a thought, he was or had already done something about being somewhere else. “You had me come so you could prove something to your father.”

Sparrow Heart gasped in surprise—whether by White Hat figuring it out or by how fast and immovable the Elder being was, White Hat was unsure. He ripped the short staff out of the young man’s hands and crushed it in his talon. White Hat tossed it to the ground with aplomb.

“You have wasted my time and hurt my endeavors,” White Hat found his was feeling irritated for the first time in a long, long while.

Sparrow Heart backed up a step, but seemed to steel himself as he glared, “You wait in the wings while the world burns—while my country and my people are stripped of it’s life and now, _now_ you wish to—to what?! Make _friends_?!”

“Why did you take the name Sparrow Heart, I wonder?” White Hat asked, seeming to ignore the young man’s words and stare down at him.

“You come to us on the word of a Villain?! You expect us to trust you—” he continued, also ignoring White Hat.

White Hat reached out, and grasped through the young man’s chest. Sparrow Heart choked on his next words, eyes bright and wide as he looked up at White Hat. White Hat pulled out the lad’s soul, careful, but there is no real painless way to do so. He inspects the bright thing closely. Sparrow Heart’s literal heart and soul is a winding rainbow, no bird involved at all, and it snakes around White Hat’s talons licking a heated path around his wrist.

“I see…” White Hat nodded, holding it up so Sparrow Heart could get a good look at it.

“ _Wha—”_

“This is a good heart. A loving heart. You love too much for your own good, Rich,” White Hat said, pushing the thing back into the human. Sparrow Heart made a cut off sound and clattered against his high-quality monitor. The images on it flickered.

_“What the fuck did you—”_

White Hat flexed his talons, being unused to pulling souls from vessels after his overdue period of inaction. “Its one of my many powers. I can see your soul—make it manifest in a physical form. It says much about a person.”

“What…?” Sparrow Heart asked again, this time a little shaky, on his knees in front the pale creature.

“That’s _why_ I trust my new employee,” White Hat explained, perhaps poorly, but he was irritated and tired after so long a flight and car-ride, “I know his soul, and now I know yours.”

“Why would you…?” Rich held his hand over his chest, clearly at a loss.

“There is much you have to learn—”

White Hat was interrupted by a surprising impact to his spine… well, what would have been his spine if he had one. He does not technically have real bones. Something meant to stick into him—a grappling hook, he supposes as he turns slightly to look. It’s high-tech, powerful, and sharp. He is unfazed.

“Sky Fox,” the Elder Being greets as a man enters from the shadows, holding the gun portion of the hook.

“Is there a reason you would invade my fortress and attack my protégé?” he growls.

White Hat tilts his head to the side, thinking for a moment, “No. No reason.”

“S-Samson, I—” Sparrow Heart starts suddenly and the man in the dark nearly snarls at his adopted son.

“You cannot be indestructible, White Hat,” the man warns, “You must have a weakness, and I will find it one day.”

“It would better suit you to find one for Black Hat.”

“Black Hat hasn’t crept into my home and stabbed my son—”

“I brought him here!” Sparrow Heart shouts, pounding his chest, “My fault! I was trying to—”

“You are in enough trouble, even without me watching from the safe-room…”

Sparrow Heart hangs his head, “You were suppose to be on a business trip.”

“I cancelled it when I heard the tabloids taking about White Hat traveling. The stop-over in Tokyo practically confirmed he was heading here,” Sky Fox sniffed, retracting his grappling hook from the Elder Being. White Hat remains unscathed.

“He only wanted to help,” White Hat said in the boy’s defense, “Apparently not _me_ , but I can appreciate his heart was well-intentioned.”

Sky Fox’s face was impassive.

“Since I have come a long way, perhaps you will listen to my proposal?” White Hat offered, turning fully to the man. Sparrow Heart was in no way a threat, it was safe to turn his back to the lad.

“Will you leave if I refuse?” Sky Fox asked.

White Hat thought about it for a second, “I was advised to not back down. I need Heroes willing to listen to me. The world is… falling into darkness. If _you_ cannot help me…”

Sky Fox sighed, seeming to melt into the shadows with his cape and cowl as he did so. An impressive feat for someone only human. “Alright… follow me.”

…

White Hat had lived a very long time. Time itself, of course, is an abstract term for a concept so vast and winding that it cannot be fully fathomed. Not in the way in which the human mind can comprehend it. Maybe in few more centuries but—

White Hat had seen the dawn and end of many an era. He stood outside of a shop in Paris during one of the world wars—he forgets which. The city would be ravaged and he was asked to by one organization or other to foster peace during negotiations… The Elder Being was not successful. He was thinking on this when a street urchin had offered to shine his shoes for a coin. White Hat had none. He needed none.

_“Lucky you,”_ the young child had said, voice hoarse, and face filthy.

“ _Desole,”_ White Hat had responded in his language, perhaps coldly.

The child eyed his shiny buttons and pristine clothes, before telling him with some sort guilt-inducing glee, “ _I guess no one will need coin much longer though, yeah? World’s ending, you know—I’m just getting to go out first. I’ll tell Saint Peter you weren’t no help for me, Sir.”_

“ _I cannot give what I do not have, child.”_

_“I ain’t talking about coin—”_ the little thing snorted, turning back to window-gaze into the shop… it was patisserie, this White Hat remembers, _“You got no mercy for us, do you? You don’t care. How can a thing like you care…?”_ A dirty handprint smudged on the glass over the carefully arranged display of breads. White Hat recalls that image vividly. He had returned days later to the burning city and saw the broken windowpane—uncleaned—and never knew what happened to the child.

In that moment, though, with the little urchin still alive, White told him, “ _I care. The world will not end. Every generation thinks it’s the last. It has yet to be.”_

_“But one day it_ will _,”_ this tiny human said, and was correct, as all things _will_ end. White Hat knows this and has seen this before, “ _And I’ld dare say, sir, everyone who told you so is right, ain’t they? The world did end for the ones who came before.”_

White Hat had shaken his head. The child sighed, then dashed off after someone who had left the bakery, begging for a little bit of coin, if not, a crumb. The customer looked perturbed, but tossed something shiny out. The child fumbled, but caught a coin, and was gone. White Hat watched, silent. Unshaken, at the time.

Years later, as he sits across from a man, wreathed in black, scowling, White Hat thinks he understands the urchin a little better.

“I can’t give you Thaddeus or Sir Cole—they are leaving Earth in a week—but I can get into contact with some part-timers. They haven’t earned their bread on the Observance, so I can guarantee they would be willing to train with you. Send them on missions. Report back to me,” Sky Fox was shoving documents across his desk.

White Hat hummed, picking up folders with sparse fillings.

“ _What_?”

“Do you have any… digital… paperwork?”

Sky Fox rolled his eyes, “For these ones? No.”

“Why not?” White Hat questioned.

“They’re not exactly…” Sky Fox hesitated here, “Listen. They _could_ be Heroes. Mostly—they are just useful. More so on the ground, and for… dirtier work.”

“I don’t understand—” White Hat started. Sky Fox put up one hand in askance.

“You don’t need to. You want some Heroes at your disposal? You got some. If you can whip these guys into shape, fantastic. I’ll send some of the better ones your way.”

“I—I think you misunderstand,” White Hat began.

Sky Fox crossed his arms, leaning against his desk, “Oh? How so?”

“I am not doing work for you,” White Hat said, tone dropping in temperature, “I need help. I need Heroes to—”

“To _what_ , White Hat?” the shadowed man asked, “To _combat the forces of evil_? Is that what you need?”

White Hat gripped the files in his hands tight, “Yes.”

Sky Fox barked out a mean sounding laugh, “Right—well. I don’t work in vague notions of _Good_ and _Evil_. I live in the _real_ world, mate.”

“Sky Fox, your world is in very real peril—”

“I know!” the man snapped, banging his hands on the desk, “Do you have any idea that I _know_?” He pointed to screens behind him. They seemed to light up with his movements. Prominent government officials, mafia leaders, and several other faces were scrolling across the monitors. Images and scenes of brutality followed in their wake. “There’s _real_ harm being done on _my_ world, White Hat. I am trying to combat it in only ways that _I_ know how—I keep on eye on it and then I _deal with it_ —do you understand?!”

White Hat looked away from the carnage and into the man’s wild eyes.

“You want help—this is what I’ll give you. No more, no less. You take these Heroes and do whatever you want,” Sky Fox took a deep breath and when his hands calmly lowered back to his sides, fists clenched, he was leveling a serious look at the Elder Being, “But at the end of the day, you know those Heroes work for _me_. No one is let off the hook. Their powers, their talents, their skills and abilities are too dangerous. I can’t trust them to remain… unlooked after.”

White Hat remained silent for a moment.

“If you can’t help _them_ —I can’t help _you_ ,” Sky Fox said. White Hat had no idea if it was a warning or a threat.

In the end, White Hat swept the files into his empty carry-on without glancing at them. He looked at the man in the shadows and sighed as he was led out of Sky Fox’s secret headquarters. “I think… we have had very different problems.”

Sky Fox grunted something, perhaps questioning.

“It seems where I told myself to not get too involved,” the Elder Being mused openly, “You seem much too concerned with your fellow humans.”

“Well…” Sky Fox growled, which White Hat was slowly learning was just the way he spoke, even neutrally, “I have always believed absolute power corrupts absolutely…”

“So then, why do are you obsessed with controlling it?”

Sky Fox looked up at the Elder Being, confused.

“Power. Why are you so invested in keeping it in check? Would you then not have all the power?”

Sky Fox scoffed at him, “And what would you know? You can’t care. Nothing can touch you.”

“You didn’t seem to think so earlier,” White Hat pointed out.

Sky Fox did not answer. He simply input a code into a hanger, that lifted the ceiling of his building into the starry ribbon of the night sky. White Hat had no idea how long he remained buried beneath the red clay of the earth.

“Your silence is very telling—” White Hat nearly jested, but then turned to the man, hiding amongst the dark, “Tell your son I am sorry. I had not meant to frighten him, or you. I am perhaps… not the best at making myself understood.”

“I understand you,” Sky Fox insisted, “I just don’t think you understand us.”

White Hat shrugged, best he could, “I am trying.”

“Well. You got what you wanted—” Sky Fox started.

“Hmm, I wonder,” White Hat said, mostly to himself. If Sky Fox heard, he did not seem to show it, let alone give out any grievances. “Still, thank you for your time.”

Sky Fox gave a half-laugh at that.

“Good bye for now.”

White Hat stepped out into the dry air, staring up at the sky, its vast desert of stars like diamonds sparkling against ash… and he thought about the long time it took to travel to the very place he was standing. Alone, now, and lost. Behind him was a closed door—in front of him, a winding path. He thought about that rainbow that was in the young Hero’s heart. It winded a deep path, spoke of history and, of course, a kind of love that was… it was something White Hat realized he lacked.

He lacked all color.

He felt empty—not drained, just… empty.

He took a breath he didn’t need, and rent a hole into the sky and climbed through carefully. He tumbled out the other side, plopping down outside the white gates of his Manor. His little carry-on clattered behind him, heavy with paperwork. The sun was shining bright, and birds were singing. White Hat walked up his long drive as the hole across space closed up behind him.

He entered the Manor, forgetting that locks were a thing, and broke his own door handle. It shattered in his hand and he made a quiet, “Oh my…” as he awkwardly looked around the foyer. He was closing the door, and trying to shove the handle back on when the lift down the hallway pinged. Steps were coming towards him, and White Hat turned, embarrassed as Dr. Slug stood a few feet away, hands on his hips.

“I gave you a key,” he reminded.

“Yes, I remember,” White Hat said, and pulled the key in question out his pants pocket.

“We use keys to unlock doors, White Hat.”

White Hat found that the way Dr. Slug used his name was… _familiar_. He liked it. He was unsure how to express the flush of genuine… _something_ … that presented itself whenever Dr. Slug took to speaking directly at him. “I have not often worried about doors.”

“You live with humans,” Slug said, vaguely waving at himself, “You act like a human.”

“Is that not unsettling, though?” White Hat questioned. He then reached out to Dr. Slug with the broken bit, not sure what to do with it. Dr. Slug was kind enough to take it from him and inspect it with a not-so-rare unjudgmental eye.

“What? You acting like a person?” Slug tried to clarify.

White Hat unhelpfully nodded at first, before realizing Slug was still turning the handle over in his palms. Perhaps he was contemplating the inhuman strength… a testament to the foolish nature of the man’s request. “I cannot be what I am not. Why act like a human if I am not one? Why worry over the unease I cause to others? All I can do is protect you from things that might harm you. I am—I am something _else_.”

“I know,” Slug said simply, looking up at him with eye too brown, too warm, too human… too beautiful for White Hat to not appreciate. He almost didn’t hear the words at first, so focused on the eyes that seemed to stare into his non-existent soul, “I’m not asking you to be human.”

“Then why the fuss of the doors and the plane ride and—and—” White Hat looked down at the little carry-on.

Dr. Slug had bandages across his face, but even so, the smile was unmistakable. White Hat liked Dr. Slug’s smiles, when they came, all of them. From smug to surprised to even a softer one. A sadder one. This one was newer, it was mysterious to him. “White Hat, I would never ask you to do something you are incapable of.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“You will,” Dr. Slug said, tone closer to a murmur, but still much too loud to be one. At least, to White Hat it seemed loud. But it couldn’t be. Yet it invaded the inside of him. Made it a little less empty, this confidence and assurance.

“I—I’m _trying_ ,” White Hat sighed it more than said.

Dr. Slug nodded, “And I’m proud you. I really am.”

White Hat found himself flushing—a bluish glow visible in the reflection of the sparkling tiles of his floor as his gaze snapped down in further embarrassment. He found he couldn’t respond to the words.

“You did good,” Dr. Slug continued, “You went on a flight by yourself. You got home a little earlier than expected, and you broke the front door, but… I can only assume you brought home _something_. You are quite faithful sooooo—” Dr. Slug had rocked on his heels and tilted his head to try and catch White Hat’s eye. “Welcome home, White.”

The words were warm, and so welcoming, that for a moment, White Hat did not feel lost. His emptiness was, not filled, but stolen, perhaps by another feeling. One he had no name for yet. One he was almost terrified to give a name to. It took him another moment before he quickly pulled his carry-on to stand between them.

“Thank you, S-Slug—” White Hat tripped over the informal address, not sure why now he had chosen to do so, but it felt appropriate, “I do have something—” White Hat paused, then roughly sighed. “I forgot to pick up a souvenir in Australia…”

Dr. Slug laughed, taking White Hat’s baggage in the hand not occupied by the broken bits of their home, “Alright, maybe I did ask too much of you too quickly—”

“Well! I did get something in Japan on my stop,” White Hat rushed to say, and bent to open up the baggage. Slug seemed a little surprised, but didn’t stop him. He presented the gift to the man quickly, a little embarrassed now, “It’s not much but—”

White Hat cut himself off at the astonished look on the man’s face. He gingerly took the red scarf, thumb rubbing across the golden thread that created the butterfly near the end of the fabric. “It’s… _soft_ …”

“Yes,” White Hat felt very nervous, trying to explain himself, “I liked the butterfly—well, and the colors, but… yes. I couldn’t help it. I just—it’s something I thought you… would like.” He wanted to go on about the coldness of the Manor, or maybe just the coldness of being around him but, his voice seemed to leave him.

“I do—” Slug said, sounding a little far away as he stroked the embroidery, “I like it.”

White Hat carefully raised himself up, placing his hand over Slug’s. He tried to heal the man’s injuries in a careful wave of coolness. In a moment, he seemed to go from overwhelmed to soothed, and White Hat himself felt proud. “I’m glad.”

“Thanks, White, you didn’t have to,” Slug seemed to mutter.

“Well, you did ask.”

“Oh, no, not the scarf—” he started, then chuckled at himself as he placed to his chest securely for a second, “Though thank you, I do love butterflies. I meant for, uh… well, you know. Everything else.”

White Hat tipped his head to the side, a little confused again, “You’re welcome? But, you are the one helping me. I should be thanking you. Without you I would be at a loss.”

Slug did not respond. He just looked… he looked a little hurt. There was pain in him. White Hat was less proud of himself. His healing must be taking longer to set in due to absence. It was perhaps still to early to leave the man, what with the complexities of his injuries. “How did you fair without me?”

“Oh!” Slug seemed to startle himself before glancing around, “Actually! About that—”

Before he could continue, however, they were interrupted by a crash behind White Hat. Someone had shoulder-checked the front door, huffing and puffing, stumbling into the foyer. They immediately raised both sets of fists, loudly calling out, “Doc! What happened?! The door—”

They cut themselves off, staring at the towering Elder Being.

“Ah, White Hat,” Dr. Slug said, unapologetic and daring, “Meet my new assistant, Clarity.”

White Hat was a bit surprised to see a human girl, one familiar enough that he pointed at her in surprise. “You survived!”

Slug sputtered behind him and the girl right herself with a deep breath, “Yeah. I’m alive.”

“I’m glad,” White Hat said, and meant it.

“Eh,” she responded, and then raised her fists again, “We’ll see.”

She clocked him a good one.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always questions, comments, queries and whatnot are always welcome.
> 
> Stay safe and stay healthy. Do what you can when you can... but mostly, listen to your hearts. And I mean that in the vaguest way possible. I think we are all struggling so, be a little bit kinder to yourself and to those that need it most. Or, like White Hat, at least try. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading. No idea when the next bit will be out. But hopefully will be worth your wait.


	8. We'll Start By Discovering What We Already Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!
> 
> Sorry for the inconsistent schedule. I have MAJOR DEPRESSION.
> 
> That being said--This is unbeta'd. 
> 
> ALSO. I can't think of a TRIGGER WARNING other than implied drug use, almost death? And vague sadness.
> 
> Please enjoy!

Chapter Seven: We’ll Start By Discovering What We Already Know

Dr. Slug is currently applying an ice pack to the newest member of White Hat’s Manor. White Hat is also currently sitting on the floor in the ‘naughty box’ with an apropos ‘dunce cap’ on. This is Dr. Slug’s standard method of correcting the Elder Being’s behavior. One would assume a cosmic creature of ominous and nearly limitless powers would be immune to humiliation.

This is not so.

“I apologized,” White Hat tries not to whine. He thinks he succeeds.

Dr. Slug just gives him a withering stare, “Five more minutes.”

White Hat sighs and sinks further into the box labeled ‘Jail for Idiots’ in a meticulous, boxy black-marker writing.

Clarity winces and Dr. Slug carefully lifts the ice pack from her hands. He presses the knuckles lightly. “You probably have a few micro-fractures. However, this will strengthen your hands later in life. It’s the reason why martial artists can break wooden boards, you know,” he calmly explains as he drops the ice pack onto his desk.

“Fuck, it was like slamming my hand into a cement wall!” Clarity gingerly touches the reddened skin before glancing over at White Hat, “I thought you were like… light particles or whatever?”

“Um, yes, but I do take up and create physical space and—”

“He’s indestructible,” Dr. Slug cuts off by waving his hand dismissively.

“Only through mortal means,” White Hat lamely clarifies, before adding, “Of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Clarity snidely repeats. She then focuses her attention back to Dr. Slug, “Thanks for the pack, Doc. I should have realized, I guess.”

“Anytime, darling, but why not just let White heal your hand?” he asks. White Hat is intrigued by the new name the man has given her. Clarity is… perhaps not one would associate with the sentiment of a ‘darling.’ She is thin, almost to the point of cutting, with electric blue hair and wicked eyeliner surrounding her colored eyes. Her clothes are fitted, with safety pins closing and keeping eclectic pieces attached. Strangely, the most abrasive image is the undead unicorn pinned to her frayed jean jacket layered over an off-white hoodie.

Clarity glances over at White Hat, and he notices the slight dusting of freckles across her razor-sharp cheekbones. “I don’t need it as bad as you, Doc.”

“White Hat’s power isn’t finite,” Dr. Slug says as if offering something more. He picks up the ice pack again and turns it over in thought, “But, I won’t press the issue. Thank you for thinking of me. Why don’t you check on the project while White Hat and I debrief?”

Clarity looks slightly relieved and stands from her stool. She raps the ice pack with her bruised hand in some kind of human gesture that causes Dr. Slug to give her a fond smile. She leaves the pair alone as she goes into the lift.

Dr. Slug is just looking at White Hat now.

White Hat waits a moment.

“May I leave the box now?”

“I dunno,” Dr. Slug begins as he crosses his arms, ice pack dangling from his gloved hands. The gloves are new. A purchase from Clarity apparently. He had no idea how the girl came to be in the manor in so short a time as his absence was. “Can you tell me why my new assistant decided to punch your lights out?”

“Why do you need an assistant?” White Hat asks instead.

Slug gives him a look. The look is one White Hat has trouble figuring out. The man will not maintain eye-contact, nor will he emote even subtly. His entire face smooths out as if to wipe away all hidden thoughts. “I can’t leave the Manor. So, Clarity has been running errands for me.”

“You can’t…?” White Hat begins to parrot, and then feels foolish, “Oh. I see. Your injuries… The Manor’s residual healing properties. Of course. If I do not accompany you, you would fall prey to the damage inflicted from the fire.”

Slug flinches.

“I am sorry,” White Hat stands from the box. He does not yet step out, but he does tap his dunce cap and it morphs back into his signature top hat. “My words were perhaps… thoughtless.”

“I mean…” the doctor finally meets the one blue eye with a sigh. He rubs one of his fingers unconsciously, the cloth making a whisper sound that would be distracting if Slug did not softly finish his thought, “There are worse fates than being tied to you for the rest of my life.”

White Hat huffs a laugh, and is mildly proud at how genuine it feels, “That remains to be seen. I have been attacked several times in the last few hours.”

_“Psh!_ Attacked!” Slug rolls his eyes and leans against his worktable.

“Aside from your new assistant, my meeting with Sky Fox and his son was…” White Hat paused for a moment in thought, “It was less than ideal.”

“If you are trying to distract me from my earlier inquiry with intriguing news about _the_ most anti-social Hero on planet—it ain’t working, boss,” Dr. Slug said, voice losing softness as he went back to business gesturing at the rolling suitcase.

“Ah,” White Hat finally stepped out of the box and grabbed the suitcase to haul it up onto Dr. Slug’s work-table, “I am successful. Marginally. I have Heroes to contact… but Sky Fox seems to think he’s… in charge?”

“He’s controlling,” Slug agrees, “Almost as much as you are.”

“I prefer a hands-off approach,” White Hat argues.

The man gives him a second withering stare for the night, “Says the idiot dodging my question. Why did Clarity want to hurt you?”

“Hurt people hurt people?”

“You obtuse bastard,” Slug comments as he unzips the suitcase, “I won’t press her, but _you?_ You’re stuck with me.”

“I thought _you_ were supposed to be stuck with _me_?”

“The Good Lord of this universe wanted me dead—” Slug grunted as he lifted paperwork and dropped it on the table, “You’re the one who decided to save me. So now I am _your_ fucking problem. I’ll bug you all I want!”

White Hat found himself smiling wide as he watched the man irately picking up Hero documents and glaring up at him over all the loose papers. “Somehow, I do not think of that as a problem.”

…

Clarity is sitting on a garden bench at the back of the manor. It is quiet in White Hat’s neighborhood… It always has been. The city has treated White Hat like a sleeping dragon. The stories told about White Hat were strange whispers… a pale thing that roamed room to room in his big, empty Manor.

A haunted house.

That’s perhaps more accurate than a dragon hiding in plain sight. White Hat was very ghost-like.

Clarity use to wander from the park to the Manor as a child… she remembers placing her muddy hands on the clean, snowy bars—mucking them up like the urchin she use to be. She had no idea why she was drawn to the Manor… She simply felt like she needed to be inside. Hell, Clarity needed to be anywhere.

She strokes the egg in her lap, looking up past the shadow falling into the weedy garden. No one actively landscaped for White Hat, but nonetheless, things were growing. White puffs of weeds, dull yellow dandelions, clumps of clovers and pearlworts are dotted along the dewy grass. The garden bench was placed under a willow tree, with a view of a bird bath sitting amongst a small steppingstone trail that only lead to the bench. It was modest, and she wondered who was kind enough to set up this spot for such a distant creature. Moss grew along the stones and the bench legs…

Sunshine danced on the ground as the wind moved the leaves around Clarity’s little spot. She was hoping the warmth of the outside might be better for the egg than the sterile box the Doc set up for the creature he was growing. He wanted Clarity to take over the duties of keeping watch over it as this wasn’t necessarily a “hero thing.” Clarity didn’t mind in the slightest. The Doc was spry when he was in the Manor, or at least, functioning. He certainly seemed to be a lot more mobile with White Hat around—but Clarity knew White Hat was capable of healing those on the brink of death.

She looked down at her covered arms. Dr. Slug said he wouldn’t ask. He has been nothing but respectful. It is hard to believe his backstory, in fact, he had been so kind and understanding… lonely in a way Clarity felt resonate in her own soul.

She had been at the Manor for two days. It felt like she had always been there.

Something felt _right_ about helping the Doc, about running around the Manor.

And then White Hat returned.

He stood beside this kind, lonely, broken man and Clarity felt like she did all those weeks ago. Desperate. Dying. She asked for help as a ghost and an angel stood before her. She could hear them talk about her—and the ghost was so cold.

She saw that same ghost standing before Dr. Slug and for a moment, she thought, _He’s here to take Slug away—to finish what the angel fixed_ … It was instinctual. She wasn’t thinking past the desperation, the memories, the urge to protect the only man who had treated her with kindness.

She sighed.

Dr. Slug had told her White Hat was trying to be better.

Seeing him sitting in the stupid box helped calm her, but he just… he wasn’t _exactly_ a ghost. No, White Hat was something else now. Slug had told her the Elder Being would take some time to get use to. She hadn’t told the Doc that she had met him—and _the Other Him_ —weeks ago. Clarity was terrified Dr. Slug would send her away.

White Hat had not wanted to save her—this White Hat said that she made her choices. The being of _pure Good_ had found her unworthy… except that he also had not. She was saved… and told such a lovely secret.

“This might have been a bad idea,” she said aloud, partly to the egg in hopes that it would encourage growth. You’re suppose to talk to things like plants and babies.

The egg did not respond. If it heard her, she could not know, but she liked to imagine whatever was inside was content with her rough hands around it, a steady pulse beneath her fingers to give it something to listen to.

“I have nowhere else to go…” she confessed, “And I _can’t_ go back to The Den. I _can’t_.”

She promised the angel she would do better. When she woke up with a clear mind and a growling stomach, alive, undamaged, and filled with such terrible knowledge, she knew she had to figure out how to get inside the Manor. One way or another she would be _worthy_ of being saved—and that fucking cold ghost would have to deal with it. Deal with _her_.

It was a nice day in the garden. The egg in her hands was warm, surrounded by sunshine, and serenaded by Clarity’s humming. She was alive, somehow… a rarity in a haunted house.

Because, she realized, the Manor was haunted. Not quite from White Hat lingering in a quiet neighborhood… there had been some wasted potential. Something that should have been but wasn’t. The Angel had told her, quite plainly—

_We would have done better, had you found your home in the Manor. Promise you’ll go home._

…

“Clarity—” Slug started, and the girl was already at his elbow, holding the kettle, “Oh, thank you.”

“Yeah, no prob, Doc.”

White Hat was seated at the counter, talons folded over themselves, as he watched the doctor prepare tea. “What type is this again?”

“Mm, Lady Earl Grey,” Slug said distracted, setting down plain mugs. Clarity picked one up, nose wrinkled.

“Ugh, plain white?”

“You can decorate some if you’d like,” the doctor offered, “Paint, Sharpies, nail polish—or we could buy some more?”

Clarity put down the cup, face a little shocked at first. Then she grinned and crossed her arms looking down into the cup as Slug placed in a teabag. “You don’t need to go out of your way, Doc… but I do got a couple of, uh ya know, Sharpies… So. Thanks.”

“Of course, dear,” Slug said with a smile. He was grabbing a box from the cabinet above the stove. Clarity helped by placing her hand along his front, as if she could physically keep him from touching the heat gently radiating out. White Hat watched this casual move, hands unfolding, as he unconsciously stood.

Slug did not notice. He popped open the box in his hands, and white sugar cubes seemed to sparkle in the kitchen light. The man had looked up at White Hat, almost confused. “Do you want some too? It’ll sweeten the tea, so I figured you weren’t interested in it—”

“I—” White Hat paused, then shut his mouth and shook his head.

“Here, you can try a cube on it’s own—” Slug plucked out a cube and held it in his slightly tremoring palm. He was tired. The tea was a type of black tea, which had caffeine. The doctor had explained earlier, saying the best way was to temper it like the English, with milk. White Hat picked up the cube, popping it into his mouth, it sat on his tongue. Harsh and bright. Sweet and cloying, turning to mush. “I normally only add two cubes, but I might cut back and stick with one. Lady Grey isn’t as strong—”

A whistle cut off Slug, and he quickly dropped a cube in his cup. Clarity took the box and added four to hers. Slug began pouring the hot water from the kettle into each mug, looking up at White Hat.

“Oh, no thank you. I will take it plain,” the Elder Being said, bringing up his hand to his mouth. His tongue felt coated. His throat felt clogged.

“Alright,” Slug hummed, tipping the spout over his plain mug. The tea bag briefly floated. The doctor placed the kettle in the sink, ignoring the steam rising. He was placing spoons on top of the bags and set a kitchen timer on the counter. Three minutes. White Hat realized that he felt watched. He glanced over to see Clarity leaning against the stove, eying him.

“Too sweet for you?” she asked. It didn’t sound like she was talking about sugar.

“I would like to try the flavor on it’s own,” he explained, sitting back down. His placed one hand over another. The one that briefly touched Slug.

Clarity picked up the box of tea bags, reading aloud, “Notes of lavender?”

“It’s calming,” Dr. Slug said, placing a carton of milk beside his mug, “Do you want to try milk too, Clarity?”

“Nah—straight American!” she gruffly said, tossing the box on the counter with faux force.

Slug gave a snort before shaking the carton lightly at White Hat, “And you?”

“Next time…” he said quietly.

“Alright,” the doctor said strangely subdued, “Next time.”

The timer went off not long after, and Slug removed the tea bags, adding his milk and swirling it around. It lightened his drink. The mug he presented to White Hat was considerably darker. The heat was near burning the tips of his fingers, then his palms, as he held it securely. Clarity was slurping a tiny bit out of her spoon. Slug had not taken a sip yet, so White Hat, too, waited.

“Hm, nifty,” Clarity said, taking a gulp and then flinching, “Ow—don’t think I taste lavender though—” she waved her hand over her tongue.

Slug shook his head before dipping it and blowing over the surface of his tea. “Not gonna taste much after that,” he mumbled with amusement. He took a cautious sip. It seemed to relax him. White Hat followed his lead.

It tasted strong—pure.

“Thank you,” White Hat said, feeling flushed with some kind of new feeling.

“Good experience?” Slug questioned.

White Hat nodded, “I would like more.”

“Experiences or tea?”

“Both,” he answered, “If you are willing to accommodate.”

“I could be,” Slug said breezily, and sipped his drink. It was probably sweeter, mellower than White Hat’s own. He would like to taste one day. Today, he was fine starting with the basics.

Clarity watched them over the fog of her drink. It was almost like the haze of a dream, or a scene faded on film, fuzzy with time and overuse. A memory of what could have been.

She let herself imagine for a moment…

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, questions are welcomed! 
> 
> I hope you liked!
> 
> Also hope you google the meaning of lavender. Just because. 
> 
> Much love. Stay hopeful everyone.
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> It has been a while, hasn't it? 
> 
> I originally was planning a sequel of sorts, and this fic was going to be, like, a little spin off. 
> 
> I have no written a sequel... but the spin-off idea will not leave me alone. 
> 
> Please let me know if you want more. I am sitting on the first two chapters and a third chapter is under way.


End file.
